\ 


CRUMBLING    IDOLS 


CRUMBLING  IDOLS 


TWELVE  ESSAYS  ON  ART 
DEALING  CHIEFLY  WITH 
LITERATURE,  PAINTING  AND  THE 
DRAMA  BY  HAMLIN  GARLAND 


CHICAGO  AND  CAMBRIDGE 

PUBLISHED    BY     STONE    AND 

KIMBALL    IN    THE     YEAR 

MDCCCXCIV 


OujJi, 

COPYRIGHT,  1894 

BY 

HAMLIN  GARLAND 


TO  THE  MEN  AND  WOMEN 
OF  AMERICA  WHO  HAVE  THE 
COURAGE  TO  BE  ARTISTS. 


To  love  the  truth  in  an  age  of  lies  ; 

To  holdfast  art  when  hunger  cries  ; 
To  sing  love's  song  in  spite  of  hate, 
Keeping  his  heart  inviolate,  — 

These  are  the  artist's  victories. 


A   PERSONAL   WORD. 


THIS  book  is  not  a  history;  it  is  not  a 
formal  essay :  it  is  a  series  of  suggestions. 

I  do  not  assume  to  speak  for  any  one  but 
myself,  —  being  an  individualist,  —  and  the 
power  of  this  writing  to  destroy  or  build  rests 
upon  its  reasonableness,  simply.  It  does 
not  carry  with  it  the  weight  of  any  literary 
hierarchy. 

It  is  intended  to  weaken  the  hold  of  con 
ventionalism  upon  the  youthful  artist.  It 
aims  also  to  be  constructive,  by  its  state 
ment  and  insistent  re-statement  that  Amer 
ican  art,  to  be  enduring  and  worthy,  must  be 
original  and  creative,  not  imitative.  \s 

My  contention  is  not  against  literary  artists 
of  the  past,  but  against  fetichism.  Literary 
prostration  is  as  hopeless  and  sterile  as  pros 
tration  before  Baal  or  Isis  or  Vishnu.  It  is 
fitter  to  stand  erect  in  these  days. 


viii  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Youth  should  study  the  past,  not  to  get 
away  from  the  present,  but  to  understand 
the  present  and  to  anticipate  the  future. 
I  believe  in  the  mighty  pivotal  present.  I 
believe  in  the  living,  not  the  dead.  (^  The 
men  and  women  around  me  interest  me 
more  than  the  saints  and  heroes  of  other 
centuries.^ 

I  do  not  advocate  an  exchange  of  masters, 
but  freedom  from  masters.  Life,  Nature,  — 
these  should  be  our  teachers.  They  are 
masters  who  do  not  enslave. 

Youth  should  be  free  from  the  dominion 
of  the  dead;  therefore  I  defend  the  indi 
vidual  right  of  the  modern  creative  mind  to 
create  in  the  image  of  life,  and  not  in  the 
image  of  any  literary  master,  living  or  dead. 

There  came  a  young  man  to  Monet,  say 
ing,  "  Master,  teach  me  to  paint."  To  which 
Monet  replied,  "  I  do  not  teach  painting ;  I 
make  paintings.  There  never  has  been,  and 
there  never  will  be,  but  one  teacher :  there 
she  is!"  and  with  one  sweep  of  his  arm 
he  showed  the  young  man  the  splendor  of 
meadow  and  sunlight.  "  Go,  learn  of  her, 
and  listen  to  all  she  will  say  to  you.  If  she 


A  PERSONAL  WORD.  ix 

says  nothing,  enter  a  notary's  office  and  copy 
papers;  that,  at  least,  is  not  dishonorable, 
and  is  better  than  copying  nymphs." 

It  is  this  spirit  which  is  reinvigorating  art 
in  every  nation  of  Europe ;  and  shall  we  sit 
down  and  copy  the  last  epics  of  feudalism, 
and  repeat  the  dying  echoes  of  Romance  ? 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 

A  PERSONAL  WORD vii 

I.  PROVINCIALISM 3 

II.  NEW  FIELDS 21 

III.  THE  QUESTION  OF  SUCCESS     .    .  33 

IV.  LITERARY  PROPHECY 39 

V.  LOCAL  COLOR  IN  ART    ....  57 

VI.  THE  LOCAL  NOVEL 69 

VII.  THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA    .     .  83 

VIII.  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN  ...  99 

IX.  IMPRESSIONISM 121 

X.  LITERARY  CENTRES 145 

XL  LITERARY  MASTERS 165 

XII.  A  RECAPITULATORY  AFTERWORD  183 


I. 

PROVINCIALISM. 


j  THE   history  of  Amer- 

PROVINCIALISM.     iCa"  UteratUre  U  the  ^ 
tory      of      provincialism 

slowly  becoming  less  all-pervasive  —  the 
history  of  the  slow  development  of  a  dis 
tinctive  utterance. 

By  provincialism  I  mean  dependence  upon 
a  mother  country  for  models  of  art  produc 
tion.  This  is  the  sense  in  which  Taine  or 
Veron  would  use  the  word.  The  "  provin 
cialism  "  which  the  conservative  deplores  is 
not  provincialism,  but  the  beginning  of  an 
indigenous  literature. 

"  The  true  makers  of  national  literature," 
writes  Posnet,  in  his  "  Comparative  Litera 
ture,"  "  are  the  actions  and  thoughts  of  the 
nation  itself.  The  place  of  these  can  never 
be  taken  by  the  sympathies  of  a  cultured 
class  too  wide  to  be  national,  or  those  of  a 
central  academy  too  refined  to  be  provincial. 
Provincialism  is  no  ban  in  a  truly  national 
literature." 


4  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Using  the  word  "  provincialism,"  therefore, 
from  *he  point  of  view  of  the  central  acad 
emy,  we  have  had  too  little  of  it.  That  is  to 
say,  our  colonial  writers,  and  our  writers 
from  1800  on  to  1860,  had  too  little  to  do 
with  the  life  of  the  American  people,  and  too 
much  concern  with  British  critics.  Using  it 
in  its  literary  sense  of  dependence  upon  Eng 
land  and  classic  models,  we  have  had  too 
much  of  it.  1 1  has  kept  us  timidly  imitating  the 
great  writers  of  a  nation  far  separated  from 
us  naturally  in  its  social  and  literary  ideals. 

The  whole  development  can  be  epitomized 
thus  :  Here  on  the  eastern  shore  of  America 
lay  a  chain  of  colonies  predominantly  Eng 
lish,  soon  to  be  provinces.  Like  all  colonists, 
they  looked  back  to  their  mother-country  for 
support  and  encouragement  in  intellectual 
affairs  as  in  material  things.  They  did  not 
presume  to  think  for  themselves.  But  the 
Revolution  taught  them  something.  It 
strengthened  the  feeling  of  separate  identity 
and  responsibility.  It  liberated  them  in 
politics,  but  left  them  still  provincial  (depen 
dent)  in  literary  and  religious  things.  There 
still  remained  some  truth  in  the  British  sneer, 


PROVINCIALISM.  5 

that  American  poets  and  artists  were  merely 
shadows  or  doubles  successively  of  Pope, 
of  Scott,  of  Byron,  of  Wordsworth,  and  of 
Tennyson.  In  all  the  space  between  the 
Revolution  and  the  Civil  War,  American 
poets  reflected  the  American  taste  fairly 
well,  but  the  spirit  and  form  of  their  work 
(with  a  few  notable  exceptions)  was  imitative. 

Here  and  there  song  was  sung,  from  the 
sincere  wish  to  embody  American  life  and 
characteristic  American  thought.  Each  gen 
eration  grew  less  timid,  and  more  manly 
and  individual.  The  Civil  War  came  on, 
and  was  an  immense  factor  in  building  up 
freedom  from  old-world  models,  and  in  de 
veloping  native  literature.  National  feeling 
had  an  immense  widening  and  deepening. 
From  the  interior  of  America,  men  and 
women  rose  almost  at  once  to  make  Ameri 
can  literature  take  on  vitality  and  character. 

American  life  had  been  lived,  but  not  em 
bodied  in  art.  Native  utterance  had  been 
overawed  and  silenced  by  academic  English 
judgments ;  but  this  began  to  change  after 
the  Civil  War.  The  new  field  began  to 
make  itself  felt,  not  all  at  once,  but  by 


6  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

degrees,  through  "  Snow-bound  "  and  "  The 
Biglow  Papers"  and  "The  Tales  of  the 
Argonauts  "  and  the  "  Songs  of  the  Sierras." 
But  while  this  change  was  growing,  there  was 
coming  in  in  the  Eastern  cities  the  spirit  of  a 
central  academy  that  was  to  stand  in  pre 
cisely  the  same  relation  to  the  interior  of 
America  that  London  formerly  occupied  with 
regard  to  the  whole  country. 

It  may  be  that  New  York  is  to  threaten  and 
overawe  the  interior  of  America,  as  Paris 
reigns  over  the  French  provinces.  The  work 
of  Mistral  and  the  Felibrige  may  be  needed 
with  us  to  keep  original  genius  from  being 
silenced  or  distorted  by  a  central  academy 
which  is  based  upon  tradition  rather  than 
upon  life  and  nature.  Decentralization  may 
come  to  be  needed  here,  as  in  Europe. 

The  evolutionist  explains  the  past  by  the 
study  of  laws  operative  in  the  present,  and 
by  survivals  of  ancient  conditions  obscurely 
placed  in  modern  things,  like  sinking  ice 
bergs  in  a  southern  sea.  The  attitude  of 
mind  (once  universal  with  Americans)  which 
measured  everything  by  British  standards, 


PROVINCIALISM.  7 

and  timidly  put  new  wine  into  old  bottles, 
can  still  be  found  among  the  academic  devo 
tees  and  their  disciples.  They  are  survivals 
of  a  conception  of  life  and  literature  once 
universal. 

The  change  which  has  taken  place  can  be 
specifically  illustrated  in  the  West.  That  is 
to  say,  the  general  terms  which  could  be  ap 
plied  to  the  whole  country  up  to  the  time  of 
the  Civil  War  can  be  applied  specifically  to 
the  middle  West  to-day.  As  a  Western  man, 
I  think  I  may  speak  freely,  without  being 
charged  with  undue  prejudice  toward  the 
States  I  name. 

The  school-bred  West,  broadly  speaking, 
is  as  provincial  in  its  art  as  it  is  assertive  of 
Americanism  in  politics.  The  books  it  reads, 
the  pictures  it  buys,  are  nearly  all  of  the  con 
ventional  sort,  or,  worse  yet,  imitations  of 
the  conventional.  Its  literary  clubs  valiantly 
discuss  dead  issues  in  English  literature,  and 
vote  in  majority  against  the  indigenous  and 
the  democratic.  They  have  much  to  say 
of  the  ideal  and  the  universal  in  literature, 
quite  in  the  manner  of  their  academical 
instructors. 


8  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

The  lower  ranks  of  Western  readers,  as 
everywhere,  devour  some  millions  of  tons  of 
romantic  love-stories,  or  stories  of  detectives 
or  Indians.  It  is  a  curious  thing  to  contrast 
the  bold  assertion  of  the  political  exhorter  of 
"  America  for  Americans  "  with  the  enslave 
ment  of  our  readers  and  writers  to  various 
shades  of  imitative  forms  of  feudalistic  litera 
ture.  America  is  not  yet  democratic  in  art, 
whatever  it  may  claim  to  be  in  politics. 

These  facts  are  not  to  be  quarrelled  about, 
they  are  to  be  studied.  They  are  signs  of 
life,  and  not  of  death.  It  is  better  that  these 
people  should  read  such  things  than  nothing 
at  all.  They  will  rise  out  of  it.  They  can 
be  influenced,  but  they  must  be  approached 
on  the  side  of  life,  and  not  by  way  of  the 
academic.  They  are  ready  to  support  and 
be  helped  by  the  art  which  springs  from  life. 

It  is  the  great  intelligent  middle  class  of 
America,  curiously  enough,  who  are  appar 
ently  most  provincial.  With  them  the  ver 
dict  of  the  world  is  all-important.  Their 
education  has  been  just  sufficient  to  make 
them  distrustful  of  their  own  judgment. 
They  are  largely  the  product  of  our  schools. 


PRO  VI NCI  A  L  ISM.  9 

They  have  been  taught  to  believe  that 
Shakespeare  ended  the  drama,  that  Scott 
has  closed  the  novel,  that  the  English  lan 
guage  is  the  greatest  in  the  world,  and  that 
all  other  literatures  are  curious,  but  not  at 
all  to  be  ranked  in  power  and  humanity  with 
the  English  literature,  etc.,  etc. 

I  speak  advisedly  of  these  things,  because 
I  have  been  through  this  instruction,  which 
is  well-nigh  universal.  This  class  is  the 
largest  class  in  America,  and  makes  up  the 
great  body  of  school-bred  Westerners.  They 
sustain  with  a  sort  of  desperation  all  the 
tenets  of  the  conservative  and  romantic  crit 
icism  in  which  they  have  been  instructed. 

It  can  almost  be  stated  as  a  rule  without  an 
exception  that  in  our  colleges  there  is  no  chair 
of  English  literature  which  is  not  dominated 
by  conservative  criticism,  and  where  sneer 
ing  allusion  to  modern  writers  is  not  daily\ 
made.    The  pupil  is  taught  to  worship  the    I   / 
past,  and  is  kept  blind  to  the  mighty  literary  I  P* 
movements  of  his  own  time.     If  he  comes-* 
to    understand    Ibsen,    Tolstoy,    Bjornson, 
Howells,  Whitman,   he  must   do  it  outside? 
his  instruction. 


io  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

This  instruction  is  well  meaning,  but  it  is 
benumbing  to  the  faculties.  It  is  essentially 
hopeless.  It  blinds  the  eyes  of  youth  to  the 
power  and  beauty  of  the  life  and  literature 
around  him.  It  worships  the  past,  despises 
the  present,  and  fears  the  future.  Such 
teaching  is  profoundly  pessimistic,  because 
it  sees  literary  ideals  changing.  It  has  not 
yet  seen  that  metamorphosis  is  the  law  of 
all  living  things.  It  has  not  yet  risen  to 
the  perception  that  the  question  for  America 
to  settle  is  not  whether  it  can  produce  some 
thing  greater  than  the  past,  but  whether  it 
lhall  produce  something  different  from  the 
past.  Our  task  is  not  to  imitate,  but  to 
create. 

Instruction  of  this  kind  inevitably  deflects 
the  natural  bent  of  the  young  artist,  or  dis 
courages  attempt  altogether.  It  is  the  oppo 
site  of  education ;  that  is,  it  represses  rather 
than  leads  out  the  distinctive  individuality 
of  the  student. 

These  conservative  ideas  affect  the  local 
newspapers,  and  their  literary  columns  are 
too  often  full  of  the  same  gloomy  comment. 
They  are  timidly  negative  when  not  parti- 


PRO  VI NCI  A  LISM.  1 1 

sanly  conservative.  They  can  safely  praise 
Ruskin  and  Carlyle,  and  repeat  an  old  slur 
on  Browning  or  Whitman. 

There  is  also  a  class  of  critics  who  can 
launch  into  two-column  criticisms  of  a  new 
edition  of  "  Rasselas,"  and  leave  unread  a 
great  novel  by  Tolstoy,  or  a  new  transla 
tion  of  Brand,  or  a  new  novel  by  Howells. 
Their  judgment  is  worthless  to  detect  truth 
and  beauty  in  a  work  of  art  close  at  hand. 
They  wait  for  the  judgment  of  the  East,  of 
London. 

The  American  youth  is  continually  called 
upon  by  such  critics  to  take  Addison  or 
Scott  or  Dickens  or  Shakespeare  as  a 
model.  Such  instruction  leads  naturally  to 
the  creation  of  blank-verse  tragedies  on 
Columbus  and  Washington,  —  a  species  of 
work  which  seems  to  the  radical  the  crown 
ing  absurdity  of  misplaced  effort. 

Thus,  the  American  youth  is  everywhere 
turned  away  from  the  very  material  which 
he  could  best  handle,  which  he  knows  most; 
about,  and  which  he  really  loves  most,  — 
material  which  would  make  him  individual, 
and  fill  him  with  hope  and  energy.  Thei 


12  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Western  poet  and  novelist  is  not  taught  to 
see  the  beauty  and  significance  of  life  near 
at  hand.  He  is  rather  blinded  to  it  by  his 
instruction. 

He  turns  away  from  the  marvellous 
changes  which  border-life  subtends  in  its 
mighty  rush  toward  civilization.  He  does 
not  see  the  wealth  of  material  which  lies  at 
his  hand,  in  the  mixture  of  races  going  on 
with  inconceivable  celerity  everywhere  in 
America,  but  with  especial  picturesqueness 
in  the  West.  If  he  sees  it,  he  has  not  the 
courage  to  write  of  it. 

If,  here  and  there,  one  has  reached  some 
such  perception,  he  voices  it  timidly,  with  an 
apologetic  look  in  his  eye. 

The  whole  matter  appears  to  me  to  be  a 
question  of  the  individuality.  I  feel  that 
Veron  has  stated  this  truth  better  than  any 
other  man.  In  his  assault  upon  the  central 
academy  he  says,  in  substance,  "  Education 
should  not  conventionalize,  should  not  mass 
together  ;  it  should  individualize." 

The  Western  youth,  like  the  average 
school-bred  American,  lacks  the  courage  of 
his  real  conviction.  He  really  prefers  the 


PROVINCIA  LISM.  1 3 

modern  writer,  the  modern  painter,  but  he 
feels  bound  to  falsify  in  regard  to  his  real 
mind.  As  a  creative  intelligence,  he  lacks  the 
courage  to  honestly  investigate  his  surround 
ings,  and  then  stand  by  his  judgment.  Both 
as  reader  and  writer,  he  dreads  the  Eastern 
comment.  It  is  pitiful  to  see  his  eagerness  to 
conform ;  he  will  even  go  beyond  his  teach 
ers  in  conforming.  Thus  he  starts  wrong. 
His  standards  of  comparison  are  wrong. 
He  is  forced  into  writing  to  please  some 
body  else,  which  is  fatal  to  high  art. 

To  perceive  the  force  of  all  this,  and  the 
real  hopelessness  of  instruction  according  to 
conventional  models,  we  have  only  to  observe 
how  little  that  is  distinctive  has  been  pro 
duced  by  the  great  Western  middle  States,  — 
say  Wisconsin,  Illinois,  and  Iowa.  Of  what 
does  its  writing  consist  ? 

A  multitude  of  little  newspapers,  first  of 
all,  full  of  local  news ;  and  larger  newspapers 
that  are  political  organs,  with  some  little 
attention  to  literature  on  their  inside  pages. 
Their  judgments  are  mainly  conservative, 
but  here  and  there  in  their  news  columns 
one  finds  sketches  of  life  so  vivid  one  won- 


14  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

ders  why  writers  so  true  and  imaginative  are 
not  recognized  and  encouraged. 

The  most  of  the  short  stories  in  these  papers, 
however,  are  absolutely  colorless,  where  they 
are   not  pirated   exotics.      In  all  that  they 
call  "  literature  "  these  papers  generally  re 
flect  what  they  believe  to  be  the   correct 
thing   in   literary  judgment.      In   their  un- 
•x"  conscious  moments  they  are  fine  and  true. 
\\        Art,  they  think,  is  something  far  away,  and 
//    literary  subjects   must  be   something   select 
and  very  civilized.     And  yet  for  forty  years 
*4--  /      an  infinite  drama  has  been  going  on  in  those 
wide  spaces  of  the  West,  —  a  drama  that  is 
\      as  thrilling,  as  full  of  heart  and  hope  and 
\     battle,   as    any  that    ever    surrounded    any 

I man;  a  life  that  was  unlike  any  ever  seen 

on  the  earth,  and  which  should  have  pro 
duced  its  characteristic  literature,  its  native 
art  chronicle. 

As  for  myself,  I  am  overwhelmed  by  the 
majesty,  the  immensity,  the  infinite  charm  of 
the  life  that  goes  on  around  me.  Themes 
are  crying  out  to  be  written.  Take,  for  a 
single  example,  the  history  of  the  lumbering 
district  of  the  northern  lakes,  — a  picturesque 


PROVINCIALISM.  15 

and  peculiar  life,  that  through  a  period  of 
thirty  years  has  been  continually  changing 
in  all  but  a  few  of  its  essential  features ;  and 
yet  this  life  has  had  only  superficial  rep 
resentation  in  the  sketches  of  the  tourist 
or  reporter;  its  inner  heart  has  not  been 
uttered. 

The  subtle  changes  of  thought  and  of  life 
that  have  come  with  the  rise  of  a  city  like  St, 
Paul  or  Minneapolis;  the  life  of  the  great 
saw-mills  and  shingle-mills ;  and  the  river- 
life  of  the  upper  Mississippi  are  all  fine  sub 
jects.  So  are  the  river  towns  like  Dubuque 
and  Davenport,  with  their  survivals  of  French 
life  reaching  down  to  the  present  year,  and 
thus  far  unrecorded. 

Then  there  is  the  mixture  of  races ;  the  com 
ing  in  of  the  German,  the  Scandinavian  ;  the 
marked  yet  subtle  changes  in  their  character. 
Then  there  is  the  building  of  railroads,  with 
all  their  trickery  and  false  promises  and 
worthless  bonds ;  the  rise  of  millionnaires ; 
the  deepening  of  social  contrasts.  In  short, 
there  is  a  great  heterogeneous,  shifting,  brave 
population,  a  land  teeming  with  unrecorded 
and  infinite  drama. 


1 6  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

It  is  only  to  the  superficial  observer  that 
this  country  seems  colorless  and  dull ;  to  the 
veritist  it  is  full  of  burning  interest,  greatest 
possibilities.  I  instance  these  localities  be 
cause  I  know  something  special  about  them ; 
but  the  same  words  apply  to  Pennsylvania, 
Ohio,  or  Kentucky.  And  yet  how  few  writers 
of  national  reputation  this  eventful  century- 
long  march  of  civilization  has  produced ! 

We  have  had  the  figures,  the  dates,  the 
bare  history,  the  dime-novel  statement  of 
^pioneer  life,  but  how  few  real  novels!  How 
jfew  accurate  studies  of  speech  and  life! 
\  There  it  lies,  ready  to  be  put  into  the  novel 
and  the  drama,  and  upon  canvas ;  and  it  must 
be  done  by  those  born  into  it.  Joaquin  Mil 
ler  has  given  us  lines  of  splendid  poetry 
touching  this  life,  and  Edward  Eggleston, 
Joseph  Kirkland,  Opie  Read,  Octave  Thanet, 
have  dealt  more  or  less  faithfully  with  certain 
phases  of  it ;  but  mainly  the  mighty  West, 
with  its  swarming  millions,  remains  unde- 
lineated  in  the  novel,  the  drama,  and  the 
poem. 

The  causes  of  it,  as  I  have  indicated,  are 
if    twofold  :  first,  lack  of  a  market ;  and,  second, 


PR  O  VI NCI  A  LISM.  l  7 

lack  of  perception.  This  lack  of  perception 
of  the  art-possibilities  of  common  American 
life  has  been  due  to  several  causes.  Hard 
life,  toil,  lack  of  leisure,  have  deadened  and 
calloused  the  perceiving  mind,  making  life 
hard,  dull,  and  uninteresting.  But,  beyond 
this,  the  right  perception  has  been  lacking 
on  the  part  of  instructors  and  critics. 
Everything  has  really  tended  to  repress  or 
distort  the  art-feeling  of  the  young  man  or 
woman.  They  have  been  taught  to  imitate, 
not  to  create. 

But  at  last  conditions  are  changing.  All 
over  the  West  young  people  are  coming  on 
who  see  that  every  literature  in  the  past  was 
at  its  best  creative  and  not  imitative.  Here 
and  there  a  paper  or  magazine  lends  itself 
to  the  work  of  encouraging  the  young  writer 
in  original  work.  They  are  likely  to  err 
now  on  the  side  of  flattery.  Criticism  should 
be  helpful,  not  indiscriminate  either  in  praise 
or  blame. 

And  more  than  this,  in  every  town  of  the 

interior  there  are  groups   of  people  whose 

firmness    of    conviction  and   broad    culture 

make    them    the    controlling  power  in    all 

2 


1 8  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

local  literary  work.     They  are  reading  the 
most  modern  literature,  and  their  judgments 
are     not    dependent    upon    New   York    or 
London,  though  they  find  themselves  in  full 
harmony  with  progressive  artists  every 
where.     They  are  clearly  in  the  mi 
nority,  but  they  are   a  growing 
company  everywhere,  and 
their  influence  is  felt  by 
every  writer  of  the 
progressive 
group. 


II. 

NEW    FIELDS. 


n  THE  secret  of  every  last->| 

NEW  FIELDS.          ^  SU°CeSS   in  ait   ^^ 

ature  lies,  I  believe,;  in  a 
powerful,  sincere,  emotional  concept  oflife 
first,  and,  second,  in  the  acquired  power  to 
convey  that  concept  to  others.  This  leads 
necessarily  to  individuality  in  authorship,  and 
to  freedom  from  past  models^j 

This  theory  of  the  veritist  is,  after  all,  a    / 
statement  of  his   passion  for  truth  and  for  / 
individual  expression.     The  passion  does  not  \ 
spring  from   theory;  the   theory  rises  from  ; 
the    love    of  the  verities,    which  seems    to 
increase  day  by  day  all  over  the  Western 
world. 

The  veritist,  therefore,  must  not  be  taken 
to  be  dogmatic,  only  so  far  as  he  is  per 
sonally  concerned.  He  is  occupied  in  stating 
his  sincere  convictions,  believing  that  only 
in  that  way  is  the  cause  of  truth  advanced. 
He  addresses  himself  to  the  mind  prepared 


22  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

to  listen.     He  destroys  by  displacement,  not 
by  attacking  directly. 

Clt  is  a  settled  conviction  with  me  that  each 
locality  must  produce  its  own  literary  record, 
each  special  phase  of  life  utter  its  own  voice. 
There  is  no  other  way  for  a  true  local  ex 
pression  to  embody  itself.  The  sun  of  truth 
strikes  each  part  of  the  earth  at  a  little  dif 
ferent  angle ;  it  is  this  angle  which  gives 
life  and  infinite  variety  to  literature.  It  is 
the  subtle  differences  which  life  presents  in 
California  and  Oregon,  for  example,  which 
will  produce,  and  justify,  a  Pacific-Coast 
literature. 

In  all  that  I  have  written  upon  local  liter 
ature,  I  have  told  the  truth  as  I  saw  it.  That 
others  did  not  see  it  in  the  same  light,  was 
to  be  expected.  And  in  writing  upon  Pacific- 
Coast  literature,  undoubtedly  I  shall  once 
more  be  stating  the  cause  of  veritism ;  for 
the  question  of  Pacific-Coast  literature  is 
really  the  question  of  genuine  American 
literature.  The  same  principles  apply  to  all 
sections  of  the  land. 

The  mere  fact  that  a  writer  happens  to 
live  in  California  or  Oregon  will  not  make 


NEW  FIELDS.  23 

him  a  part  of  that  literature,  any  more  than 
Stevenson's  life  in  Samoa  will  make  him  a 
Samoan  author.  A  nation,  in  the  early  part 
of  its  literary  history,  is  likely  to  sweep  to 
gether  all  that  can,  by  any  construction,  be 
called  its  literature ;  but  as  it  grows  rich  in 
real  utterances,  it  eliminates  one  after  the 
other  all  those  writings  which  its  clearer  judg 
ment  perceives  to  be  exotics. 

The  Pacific  Coast  is  almost  like  another 
world.  Its  distance  from  New  York  and 
Boston,  its  semi-tropic  plants,  its  strange 
occupations,  place  it  in  a  section  by  itself, 
just  as  the  rest  of  the  nation  falls  naturally 
into  New  England,  the  South,  the  Middle 
States,  and  the  Northwest ;  and,  in  the  same 
way,  from  the  Pacific  States  will  continue 
to  come  a  distinct  local  literature.  Its 
vitality  depends,  in  my  judgment,  upon  this 
difference  in  quality. 

I  say  "  continue  to  come,"  because  we 
can  never  overlook  the  great  work  done 
by  Joaquin  Miller  and  Bret  Harte.  They 
came  to  this  strange  new  land,  young  and 
impressionable.  They  became  filled  with  the 
life  and  landscape  almost  with  the  same 


24  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

power  and  sincerity  as  if  they  had  been^born 
here.  Miller,  especially,  at  his  best,  got  far 
below  superficial  wonder.  He  attained  the 
love  for  his  subjects  which  is  essential  to 
sincere  art.  The  best  of  his  work  could  not 
have  been  produced  anywhere  else.  It  is 
native  as  Shasta. 

But  neither  of  these  men  must  be  taken 
for  model.  Veritism,  as  I  understand  it, 
puts  aside  all  models,  even  living  writers. 
Whatever  he  may  do  unconsciously,  the 
artist  must  consciously  stand  alone  before 
nature  and  before  life.  Nature  and  life  have 
changed  since  Miller  and  Harte  wrote.  The 
California  of  to-day  is  quite  different.  The 
creative  writer  to-day,  if  true  to  himself,  finds 
himself  interested  in  other  subjects,  and  finds 
himself  believing  in  a  different  treatment  of 
even  the  same  material. 

There  is  no  necessity  of  treating  the  same 
material,  however.  Vast  changes,  already  in 
progress,  invite  the  writer.  The  coming  in 
of  horticulture,  the  immigration  of  farmers 
from  all  the  Eastern  States;  the  mingling  of 
races ;  the  feudalistic  ownership  of  lands ;  the 
nomadic  life  of  the  farm-hands,  the  growth 


NEW  FIELDS.  25 

of  cities,  the  passing  Spanish  civilization,  — 
these  are  a  few  of  the  subjects  which  occur 
to  me  as  worthy  the  best  work  of  novelist 
and  dramatist. 

Being  "  a  farmer  by  birth  and  a  novelist  by- 
occupation,"  I  saw  most  clearly  the  literary 
possibilities  of  the  farmer's  life  in  the  valleys 
of  California  and  in  the  stupendous  forests 
of  Oregon. 

I  saw  children  moving  along  to  school  in 
the  shadow  of  the  most  splendid  mountains ; 
I  saw  a  youth  plowing,  —  behind  him  rose  a 
row  of  palms,  against  which  he  stood  like  a 
figure  of  bronze  in  relief ;  I  saw  young  men 
and  maidens  walking  down  aisles  of  green 
and  crimson  pepper-trees,  and  the  aisles  led  to 
blue  silhouetted  mountains ;  I  saw  men  herd 
ing  cattle  where  the  sun  beat  with  hot  radi 
ance,  and  strange  cacti  held  out  wild  arms  ; 
I  saw  children  playing  about  cabins,  setting 
at  defiance  the  illimitable  width  and  sun 
less  depths  of  the  Oregon  forests,  —  and  I 
thought,  "  Perhaps  one  of  these  is  the  novelist 
or  painter  of  the  future." 

Perhaps  the  future  poet  of  these  spaces  is 
plowing  somewhere  like  that,  because  it  must 


26  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

be  that  from  the  splendor  and  dramatic  con 
trast  of  such  scenes  the  poet  will  rise.  He 
always  has,  and  he  always  will.  His  feet 
will  be  on  the  soil  like  Whittier's,  and  like 
Miller's ;  his  song  will  differ  from  theirs  be 
cause  he  will  be  an  individual  soul,  and  be 
cause  his  time  and  his  environment  will  not 
be  the  same. 

Why  should  the  Western  artists  and  poets 
look  away  to  Greece  and  Rome  and  Persia 
for  themes  ?  I  have  met  Western  people 
who  were  writing  blank-verse  tragedies  of 
the  Middle]  Ages  and  painting  pictures  of 
sirens  and  cherubs,  and  still  considered  them 
selves  Western  writers  and  Western  artists  ! 
The  reason  is  not  hard  to  find.  They  had 
not  risen  to  the  perception  of  the  significant 
and  beautiful  in  their  own  environment,  or 
they  were  looking  for  effects,  without  regard 
to  their  sincere  conviction.  They  were  poets 
of  books,  not  of  life. 

This  insincerity  is  fatal  to  any  great  work 
of  art.  A  man  must  be  moved  by  some 
thing  higher  than  money,  by  something 
higher  than  hope  of  praise;  he  must  have 
a  sleepless  love  in  his  heart  urging  him 


NEW  FIELDS.  27 

to  re-create  in  the  image  the  life  he  has 
loved.  He  must  be  burdened  and  without 
rest  until  he  has  given  birth  to  his  concep 
tion.  He  will  not  be  questioned  when  he 
comes;  he  will  be  known  as  a  product  of 
some  one  time  and  place,  a  voice  speaking 
the  love  of  his  heart. 

There  was  much  of  dross  and  effectism  in 
Miller's  earlier  work,  but  it  was  filled  with 
an  abounding  love  of  Sierra  mountains  and 
forests  and  moving  things,  which  made  him 
the  great  figure  of  the  Coast.  But  the  litera 
ture  which  is  to  come  from  the  Pacific  slope, 
in  my  judgment,  will  be  intimate  and  human 
beyond  any  California  precedent.  It  will 
not  dodge  or  equivocate.  It  will  state  the 
truth.  It  will  not  be  spectacular,  it  will  not 
deal  with  the  outside  (as  a  tourist  must  do). 
It  will  deal  with  the  people  and  their  home 
dramas,  their  loves  and  their  ambitions.  It 
will  not  seek  themes.  Themes  will  crowd 
upon  them  and  move  them. 

The  lovers  who  wander  down  the  aisles  of 
orange  or  lemon  or  pepper  trees  will  not 
marvel  at  blooms  and  shrubs.  Their  presence 
and  perfume  will  be  familiar  and  lovely,  not 


28  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

strange.  The  stark  lines  of  the  fir  and  the 
broadsword-thrust  of  the  banana-leaf  will 
not  attract  their  surprised  look.  All  will  be 
as  friendly  and  grateful  as  the  maple  or  the 
Lombardy  poplar  to  the  Iowa  school-boy. 

A  new  literature  will  come  with  the  gener 
ation  just  coming  to  manhood  and  woman 
hood  on  the  Coast.  If  rightly  educated,  their 
eyes  will  turn  naturally  to  the  wheat-fields, 
the  forests,  the  lanes  of  orange-trees,  the 
ranges  of  unsurpassed  mountains.  They 
will  try  to  express  in  the  novel,  the  drama,  in 
painting  and  in  song,  the  love  and  interest 
they  take  in  the  things  close  at  hand. 

This  literature  will  not  deal  with  crime 
and  abnormities,  nor  with  deceased  persons. 
It  will  deal,  I  believe,  with  the  wholesome 
love  of  honest  men  for  honest  women,  with 
the  heroism  of  labor,  the  comradeship  of  men, 
—  a  drama  of  average  types  of  character,  in 
finitely  varied,  but  always  characteristic. 

In  this  literature  will  be  the  shadows  of 
mountain-islands,  the  sweep  of  dun  plains, 
and  dark-blue  mountain-ranges  silhouetted 
against  a  burning  yellow  sky.  It  will  deal 
with  mighty  forests  and  with  man's  brave  war 


NEW  FIELDS.  29 

against  the  gloom  and  silence.  It  will  have 
in  it  types  of  vanishing  races,  and  prophecies 
of  coming  citizens.  It  will  have  the  per 
fume  of  the  orange  and  lemon  trees,  the  pur 
ple  dapple  of  spicy  pepper-tree  fruit,  the 
grace  of  drooping,  fern-like  acacia  leaves. 

And  in  the  midst  of  these  sights  and 
sounds,  moving  to  and  fro  in  the  shadow  of 
these  mountains,  and  feeling  the  presence  of 
this  sea,  will  be  men  and  women  working 
out  the  drama  of  life  in  a  new  way,  thinking 
new  thoughts,  building  a  happier,  sunnier 
order  of  things,  perhaps,  where  the  laborer 
will  face  the  winter  always  without  fear  and 
without  despondency. 

When  the  real  Pacific  literature  comes,  it 

will  not  be  subject  to  misunderstanding.     It 

will  be  such   a  literature   as  no  other 

locality  could  produce,  a  literature 

that  could  not  have  been  written 

in  any  other  time,  or  among 

other     surroundings. 

That  is  the  test 

of    a    national 

literature. 


III. 

THE    QUESTION    OF    SUCCESS. 


BUT  the  question  forced 
on  the  young  writer,  even 

THE    QUESTION 

when  he  is  well  disposed 

OF  SUCCESS.  j  j      r  -4.U  •    j- 

toward  dealing  with  indig 
enous  material,  is,  Will  it  pay?  Is  there  a 
market  for  me  ? 

Let  me  answer  by  pointing  out  that  almost 
every  novelist  who  has  risen  distinctively  out 
of  the  mass  of  story-writers  in  America,  re 
presents  some  special  local  life  or  some  spe 
cial  social  phase. 

Mr.  Cable  stands  for  the  Creole  South  f 
Miss  Murfree  speaks  for  the  mountaineer- 
life  in  Tennessee ;  Joel  Harris  represents  the 
new  study  of  theNegro ;  Miss  Wilkins  voices 
the  thought  of  certain  old  New  England 
towns ;  Mr.  Howells  represents  truthful 
treatment  of  the  cities  of  Boston  and  New 
York ;  Joseph  Kirkland  has  dealt  with  early 
Illinois  life ;  Harold  Frederic  has  written 
two  powerful  stories  of  interior  New  York 


34  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

life ;  and  so  on  through  a  list  of  equally  brave 
and  equally  fine  writers. 

I  think  it  may  be  said,  therefore,  that  suc 
cess  in  indigenous  lines  is  every  year  becom 
ing  more  certain.  You  will  not  find  your 
market  in  the  West  yet,  but  the  great  maga 
zines  of  the  country  are  every  year  gaining 
in  Americanism. 

If  we  look  away  to  England,  we  see  the 
same  principle  illustrated.  The  most  vital 
blood  of  the  English  novel  to-day  comes  from 
the  Provinces.  Barrie  with  his  "  A  Window 
in  Thrums,"  Kipling  with  his  "  Tales  of  the 
Hills,"  Olive  Schreiner  with  "An  African 
Farm,"  Jane  Barlow  with  "  Irish  Idyls," 
are  putting  to  rout  the  two-volume  British 
novel,  which  never  leaves  anything  out  or 
puts  anything  in.  It  is  precisely  the  same 
movement  which  is  going  on  in  Norway, 
Holland,  Hungary,  — all  over  Europe,  in  fact. 
Wherever  the  common  man  rises  to  the 
power  of  stating  his  interest  in  life,  it  takes 
the  form  of  local  fiction. 

The  consideration  of  success,  however,  is 
not  the  power  which  makes  the  true  artist. 
Deeper  yet  must  be  the  keen  creative  delight, 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUCCESS.       35 

—  the  sweetest,  deepest  pleasure  the  artist 
knows;  the  passion  which  sends  him  sup- 
perless  to  bed  in  order  that  his  story 
shall  reflect  his  own  ideal,  his  own  concept 
of  life. 

But  it  may  be  concluded  that  the  en 
couragement  of  this  local  fiction  will  rob  our 
literature  of  its  dignity.  There  is  no  dignity! 
in  imitation,  it  is  mere  pretence ;  to  seek  dig 
nity  in  form  is  like  putting  on  stilts.  The 
assumption  of  the  epic  by  an  American  poet 
is  like  putting  a  chimney-pot  hat  on  a  child. 
If  we  insist  on  sincerity,  the  question  of  dig 
nity  will  take  care  of  itself.  Truth  is  a  fine 
preparation  for  dignity,  and  for  beauty  as 
well. 

Art,  I  must  insist,  is  an  individual  thing,  — 
the  question  of  one  man  facing  certain  facts 
and  telling  his  individual  relations  to  them. 
His  first  care  must  be  to  present  his  own 
concept.  This  is,  I  believe,  the  essence  of 
veritism :  "  Write  of  those  things  of  which 
you  know  most,  and  for  which  you  care 
most.  By  so  doing  you  will  be  true  to  your 
self,  true  to  your  locality,  and  true  to  your 
time." 


36  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

I  am  a  Western  man ;  my  hopes  and  am 
bitions   for  the  West   arise   from    absolute 
knowledge  of  its  possibilities.     I  want  to  see 
its  prairies,  its  river  banks   and  coules,   its 
matchless  skies,  put   upon  canvas.     I  want 
to  see  its  young  writers  writing  better  books, 
its  young  artists  painting  pictures  that  are 
true  to  the  life  they  live  and  the  life   they 
know.     I  want  to  see  the  West  supporting  its 
own  painters  and   musicians  and  novelists; 
and  to  that  end  I  want  to  state  my  earnest 
belief,  which  I  have  carefully  matched  with 
the  facts  of  literary  history,  that,  to  take  a 
place   in  the  long  line  of  poets  and  artists 
in    the     English     language,     the    Western 
writer    must,    above    all   other    things, 
be    true    to    himself    and    to    his 
time.       To     imitate     is    fatal. 
Provincia  lism     (that    is 
to    say,    localism) 
is    no     bait     to 
a     national 
literature. 


IV. 
LITERARY    PROPHECY. 


IT    is    interesting 
to  observe  that  all 

LITERARY   PROPHECY. 

literary  movements 

in  the  past  had  little  or  no  prevision.  The 
question  of  their  future,  their  permanence, 
did  not  disturb  them.  (My  reading  does  not 
disclose  to  me  that  Euphues  or  Spenser 
ever  thought  of  the  dark  future.  Each 
school  lived  for  its  day  and  time,  apparently, 
without  disturbing  prophecy.  ) 

Pope,  the  monarch  of  the^eitfcumscribed, 
the  emperor  of  literary  lace  and  ruffles,  so 
far  as  I  have  read,  had  no  gloomy  fore 
bodings.  His  dictatorship  was  the  most 
absolutely  despotic  and  long-continued  dic 
tatorship  the  literary  history  of  England  has 
ever  seen.  He  could  be  pardoned  for  never 
imagining  that  real  flowers  could  come  to  be 
enjoyed  better  than  gilt  and  scarlet  paper 
roses,  all  alike.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  he  had  no  prevision  of  Whitman  or 
Ibsen,  in  the  joyous  jog-trot  of  his  couplets. 


40  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

It  is  probable  that  where  any  thought  of 
the  future  troubled  the  artist,  it  unnerved 
him.  Thomas  Browne  saw  oblivion  like  a 
dark  sea  beneath  him,  but  his  view  of  life 
was  mainly  statical ;  he  had  no  basis  for 
optimistic  outlook.  His  skies  were  hung 
with  black. 

Take  larger  movements,  —  the  Reforma 
tion,  for  example.  This  movement,  in  its 
day,  filled  the  whole  religious  history  of 
of  Europe.  It  transformed  empires,  and 
planted  colonies  in  the  wilderness  of  the 
west.  It  dominated  art,  literature,  archi 
tecture,  laws,  and  yet  it  was  but  a  phase  of 
intellectual  development.  Its  order  was 
transitory ;  and  had  an  evolutionist  been 
born  into  that  austere  time,  he  would  have 
predicted  the  reaction  to  enjoyment  of 
worldly  things  which  followed,  and  would 
have  foretold  the  sure  passing  away  of  the 
whole  world  as  it  was  then  colored  and  dom 
inated  by  puritanic  thought. 

In  art,  this  narrowness  and  sincerity  of 
faith  in  itself  has  been  the  principal  source 
of  power  of  every  movement  in  the  past. 
To  question  was  to  weaken.  Had  Spenser 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  41 

suspected  the  prosiness  and  hollow  absurdity 
of  his  combats  (wherein  the  hero  always 
wins),  had  he  perceived  something  else  in 
life  better  worth  while  than  allegory  and  the 
endless  recounting  of  tales  of  chivalry,  he 
would  have  failed  to  embody  as  he  did  the 
glittering  and  caparisoned  barbarism  of  his 
forbears.  And  the  crown  which  Pope  wore 
would  have  rested  like  a  plat  of  thorns  on 
his  brow  had  he  been  visited  by  disturbing 
visions  of  a  time  when  men  would  prefer 
their  poetry  in  some  other  form  than  coup 
lets  or  quatrains,  and  would  even  question 
whether  the  "Essay  on  Man"  was  poetry 
or  not. 

With  no  conception  of  what  the  world  had 
been,  they  had  no  guiding  line  to  point  to 
that  which  the  world  was  to  be.  The  stati 
cal  idea  of  life  and  literature  held  in  all 
thought,  —  except  where  men  believed  the 
world  was  fallen  from  a  golden  age  into 
darkness  and  decay,  or  that  it  was  again 
declining  to  a  fall. 

Because  Shakespeare  and  the  group  around 
him  were  feudalistic,  and  did  not  believe  in 
the  common  personality  ;  because  the  critics 


42  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

of  Dryden's  day  believed  Shakespeare  was  a 
savage  ;  because  each  age  believed  in  its  art 
and  in  the  world  of  thought  around  it,  —  there 
fore  has  each  real  age  of  literature  embodied 
more  or  less  faithfully  its  own  outlook  upon 
life,  and  gone  peacefully,  if  not  arrogantly, 
to  its  grave  at  last,  in  blessed  ignorance  of 
the  green  dust  which  the  library  of  the  future 
held  in  store  for  it. 

In  the  thought  of  philosophers,  so-called, 
the  same  traditional  feeling  held.  The  ob 
server,  the  independent  investigator  of  facts, 
could  hardly  be  said  to  have  existed.  Tra 
dition,  the  organized  conceptions  of  the  race, 
reigned  over  the  individual,  and  men  did  not 
think.  The  Scriptures  had  said  it  all.  There 
was  no  room  for  science. 

But  while  each  age  can  be  held  in  general 
terms  to  have  had  no  prevision,  it  is  probable 
that  some  few  of  its  greatest  minds  caught 
a  glimpse  of  coming  change,  and  that  this 
power  of  prophecy  grew  slowly,  and  the 
power  of  tradition  grew  less  binding,  until 
there  came  upon  the  world  the  splendid  light 
of  the  development  theory,  uttered  by  Spencer 
and  Darwin.  I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  43 

say  that,  previous  to  the  writing  of  these 
men,  definite  prevision,  even  on  the  broadest 
lines,  was  impossible,  either  in  sociology  or 
literature. 

Until  men  came  to  see  system  and  pro 
gression,  and  endless  but  definite  succession 
in  art  and  literature  as  in  geologic  change ; 
until  the  law  of  progress  was  enunciated,  no 
conception  of  the  future  and  no  reasonable 
history  of  the  past  could  be  formulated. 
Once  prove  literature  and  art  subject  to 
social  conditions,  to  environment  and  social 
conformation,  and  the  dominance  of  the  epic 
in  one  age,  and  of  the  drama  in  another,  be 
came  as  easy  to  understand  and  to  infer  as 
any  other  fact  of  a  people's  history. 

The  study  of  evolution  has  made  the 
present  the  most  critical  and  self-analytical 
of  all  ages  known  to  us.  It  has  liberated 
the  thought  of  the  individual  as  never  be 
fore,  and  the  power  of  tradition  grows 
fainter  year  by  year. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  write  the  history 
of  the  development  of  literature.  I  have 
drifted  farther  into  the  general  subject  than 
I  intended.  I  am  merely  preparing  the  way 


44  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

for  some  more  or  less  valuable  ideas  upon 
the  future  of  American  fiction. 

Evolutionists  explain  the  past  by  means  of 
laws  operative  in  the  present,  by  survivals 
of  change.  In  an  analogous  way,  we  may 
infer  (broadly,  of  course)  the  future  of  so 
ciety,  and  therefore  its  art,  from  changes 
just  beginning  to  manifest  themselves.  The 
developed  future  is  always  prophesied  in  the 
struggling  embryos  of  the  present.  In  the 
mold  of  the  present  are  the  swelling  acorns 
of  future  forests. 

Fiction  already  commands  the  present  in 
the  form  of  the  novel  of  life.  It  already  out 
ranks  verse  and  the  drama  as  a  medium  of 
expression.  It  is  so  flexible,  admits  of  so 
many  points  of  view,  and  comprehends  so 
much  (uniting  painting  and  rhythm  to  the 
drama  and  the  pure  narrative),  that  it  has 
come  to  be  the  highest  form  of  expression  in 
Russia,  Germany,  Norway,  and  France.  It 
occupies  with  easy  tolerance  the  high  seats 
in  the  synagogue,  and  felicitates  the  other 
arts  on  having  got  in,  —  or  rather  stayed  in 
at  all.  At  its  best  it  certainly  is  the  most 
modern  and  unconventional  of  arts. 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  45 

Taking  it  as  it  stands  to-day  in  America, 
the  novel  not  only  shows  its  relation  to  the 
past  and  the  present,  but  it  holds  within 
itself  prophecies  of  impending  change.  No 
other  medium  of  art  expression  is  so  sensi 
tive  to  demand.  Change  is  sure.  What 
will  it  be? 

We  are  about  to  enter  the  dark.  We  need 
a  light.  This  flaming  thought  from  Whit 
man  will  do  for  the  search-light  of  the  pro 
found  deeps :  All  that  the  past  was  not,  the 
future  will  be. 

If  the  past  was  bond,  the  future  will  be 
free.  If  the  past  was  feudalistic,  the  future 
will  be  democratic.  If  the  past  ignored  and 
trampled  upon  women,  the  future  will  place 
them  side  by  side  with  men.  If  the  child  of 
the  past  was  ignored,  the  future  will  cherish 
him.  And  fiction  will  embody  these  facts. 

If  the  past  was  dark  and  battleful  and 
bloody  and  barbarous,  the  future  will  be 
peaceful  and  sunny.  If  the  past  celebrated 
lust  and  greed  and  love  of  power,  the  future 
will  celebrate  continence  and  humility  and 
altruism.  If  the  past  was  the  history  of  a 
few  titled  personalities  riding  high  on  obscure 


46  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

waves  of  nameless,  suffering  humanity,  the 
future  will  be  the  day  of  high  average  per 
sonality,  the  abolition  of  all  privilege,  the 
peaceful  walking  together  of  brethren,  equals 
before  nature  and  before  the  law.  And 
fiction  will  celebrate  this  life. 

If  the  past  was  gross  and  materialistic  in 
its  religion,  worshipping  idols  of  wood  and 
stone,  demanding  sacrifices  to  appease  God, 
using  creed  as  a  club  to  make  men  conform 
to  a  single  interpretation  of  man's  relation  to 
nature  and  his  fellows,  then  the  future  will 
be  high  and  pure  and  subtle  in  its  religious 
interpretations ;  and  there  will  be  granted  to 
individuals  perfect  freedom  in  the  interpre 
tation  of  nature's  laws,  a  freedom  in  fact,  as 
well  as  in  name.  And  to  fiction  is  given 
the  task  of  subtilely  embodying  this  splendid 
creed. 

All  that  the  past  was  not,  the  future  will 
be.  The  question  is  not  one  of  similarity, 
but  of  difference. 

As  we  run  swiftly  over  the  development  of 
literary  history,  we  see  certain  elements  being 
left  behind  while  others  are  carried  forward. 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  47 

Those  which  are  carried  forward  are,  how 
ever,  extremely  general  and  fundamental. 
They  are  the  bones  of  art,  not  its  curve  of 
flesh  or  flush  of  blood. 

One  of  these  central  elements  of  unchang 
ing  power,  always  manifest  in  every  really 
great  literature,  is  sincerity  in  method.  This 
produces  contemporaneousness.  The  great 
writers  of  the  past  did  not  write  "for  all 
time," —  not  even  for  the  future.  They  mainly 
were  occupied  in  interesting  some  portion  of 
their  fellow-men.  Shakespeare  had  no  care 
and  little  thought  of  the  eighteenth  century 
in  his  writing. 

He  studied  his  time,  and  tried  sincerely  to 
state  it  in  terms  that  would  please  those  whom 
he  considered  his  judicious  friends.  Thus  he 
reflected  (indirectly)  the  feudal  age,  for  that 
was  the  dominant  thought  of  his  day.  So 
Dryden  and  Pope,  each  at  his  best,  portrayed 
his  day,  putting  his  sincere  and  original  com 
ment  upon  the  life  around  him,  flavoring 
every  translation  he  made  with  the  vice  and 
lawlessness  which  he  felt  to  be  the  prevailing 
elements  of  his  immediate  surroundings.  In 
the  main,  they  believed  in  themselves. 


48  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Measured  by  our  standard,  the  writers  of 
the  Restoration  period  were  artificial  in 
manner  and  vile  in  thought.  They  smell 
always  of  the  bawdy-house,  and  their  dramas 
sicken  us  with  the  odor  of  the  filth  through 
which  their  writers  reeled  the  night  before. 
To  themselves  they  were  elegant,  truthful, 
and  worthy  of  being  taken  seriously  at  their 
best  and  forgiven  for  their  worst. 

The  romantic  school  of  fiction,  while  it 
reigned,  was  self-justifiable,  at  least  in  great 
figures  like  Scott  and  Hugo,  because  it  was 
a  sincere  expression  of  their  likings  and  dis- 
likings.  It  reflected  directly  and  indirectly 
their  rebellion  against  the  old,  and  put  in  evi 
dence  their  conception  of  the  office  of  litera 
ture.  It  was  also  wholesome,  and,  in  Hugo, 
consciously  humanitarian.  The  romancers 
did  their  work.  It  will  never  be  done  so  well 
again,  because  all  that  follows  their  model 
will  be  imitative ;  theirs  was  the  genuine 
romanticism. 

The  fiction  of  the  future  will  not  be  roman 
tic  in  any  such  sense  as  Scott  or  Hugo 
was  romantic,  because  to  do  that  would  be 
to  re-live  the  past,  which  is  impossible ;  to 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  49 

imitate  models,  which  is  fatal.  Reader  and 
writer  will  both  be  wanting.  The  element  of 
originality  follows  from  the  power  of  the  ele 
ment  of  sincerity.  "  All  original  art,"  says 
Taine,  "is  self-regulative."  It  does  not 
imitate.  It  does  not  follow  models.  It 
stands  before  life,  and  is  accountant  to  life 
and  self  only.  Therefore,  the  fiction  of  the 
future  must  be  original,  and  therefore  self- 
regulative. 

The  fiction  of  the  past  dealt  largely  with 
types,  often  with  abstractions  or  caricatures. 
It  studied  men  in  heroic  attitudes.  It  con 
cerned  itself  mainly  with  love  and  war.  It 
did  not  study  men  intimately,  except  in 
vicious  or  criminal  moods. 

As  fiction  has  come  to  deal  more  and  more 
with  men  and  less  with  abstractions,  it  will 
be  safe  to  infer  that  this  will  continue. 
Eugene  Veron  covered  the  ground  fully  when 
he  said,  "  We  care  no  longer  for  gods  or 
heroes ;  we  care  for  men."  This  is  true  of 
veritism,  whose  power  and  influence  augment 
daily;  even  the  romance  writers  feel  its 
influence,  and  are  abandoning  their  swiftly 
running  love-stories  for  studies  of  character. 
4 


50  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Like  the  romantic  school  of  painting,  they 
are  affected  by  the  influence  they  fear. 

The  novels  of  Bulwer,  Scott,  and  Hugo, 
are,  after  all,  mixed  with  aristocratic  influence, 
though  Hugo  had  much  more  of  what  might 
be  called  the  modern  spirit,  even  in  his  so- 
called  historical  studies. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  fiction  of  the 
future  will  grow  more  democratic  in  outlook 
and  more  individualistic  in  method.  Impres 
sionism,  in  its  deeper  sense,  means  the  state 
ment  of  one's  own  individual  perception  of 
life  and  nature,  guided  by  devotion  to  truth. 
Second  to  this  great  principle  is  the  law  that 
each  impression  must  be  worked  out  faith 
fully  on  separate  canvases,  each  work  of 
art  complete  in  itself.  Literalism,  the  book 
that  can  be  quoted  in  bits,  is  like  a  picture 
that  can  be  cut  into  pieces.  It  lacks  unity. 
The  higher  art  would  seem  to  be  the  art 
that  perceives  and  states  the  relations  of 
things,  giving  atmosphere  and  relative  values 
as  they  appeal  to  the  sight. 

Because  the  novels  of  the  past  were  long, 
involved,  given  to  discussion  and  comment 
upon  the  action,  so  the  novel  of  the  future 
will  be  shorter  and  simpler  and  less  obvious 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  51 

in  its  method.  It  will  put  its  lessons  into 
general  effect  rather  than  into  epigrams. 
Discussion  will  be  in  the  relations  of  its 
characters,  not  on  quotable  lines  or  para 
graphs.  Like  impressionism  in  painting,  it 
will  subordinate  parts  to  the  whole. 

It  will  teach,  as  all  earnest  literature  has 
done,  by  effect ;  but  it  will  not  be  by  direct 
expression,  but  by  placing  before  the  reader 
the  facts  of  life  as  they  stand  related  to  the 
artist.  This  relation  will  not  be  put  into 
explanatory  notes,  but  will  address  itself  to 
the  perception  of  the  reader. 

Turning  our  attention  for  a  moment  to  the 
actualities  of  modern  fiction,  we  find  destruc 
tive  criticism  to  be  the  most  characteristic 
literary  expression  of  the  present  and  of  the 
immediate  future,  because  of  this  slow  rising 
of  the  literary  mind  to  prevision  of  change 
in  life. 

Because  the  fictionist  of  to-day  sees  a 
more  beautiful  and  peaceful  future  social 
life,  and,  in  consequence,  a  more  beautiful 
and  peaceful  literary  life,  therefore  he  is 
encouraged  to  deal  truthfully  and  at  close 
grapple  with  the  facts  of  his  immediate 
present.  His  comment  virtually  amounts  to 


52  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

satire  or  prophecy,  or  both.  Because  he  is 
sustained  by  love  and  faith  in  the  future, 
he  can  be  mercilessly  true.  He  strikes  at 
thistles,  because  he  knows  the  unrotted  seed 
of  loveliness  and  peace  needs  but  sun  and 
the  air  of  freedom  to  rise  to  flower  and 
fragrance. 

The  realist  or  veritist  is  really  an  optimist, 
a  dreamer.  He  sees  life  in  terms  of  what  it 
might  be,  as  well  as  in  terms  of  what  it  is ; 
but  he  writes  of  what  is,  and,  at  his  best, 
suggests  what  is  to  be,  by  contrast.  He 
aims  to  be  perfectly  truthful  in  his  delinea 
tion  of  his  relation  to  life,  but  there  is  a 
tone,  a  color,  which  comes  unconsciously 
into  his  utterance,  like  the  sobbing  stir  of 
the  muted  violins  beneath  the  frank,  clear 
song  of  the  clarionet ;  and  this  tone  is  one 
of  sorrow  that  the  good  time  moves  so 
slowly  in  its  approach. 

He  aims  to  hasten  the  age  of  beauty  and 
peace  by  delineating  the  ugliness  and  war 
fare  of  the  present;  but  ever  the  converse 
of  his  picture  rises  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader.  He  sighs  for  a  lovelier  life.  He 
is  tired  of  warfare  and  diseased  sexualism, 
and  Poverty  the  mother  of  Envy.  He 


LITERARY  PROPHECY.  53 

is  haggard  with  sympathetic  hunger,  and 
weary  with  the  struggle  to  maintain  his 
standing  place  on  this  planet,  which  he  con 
ceives  was  given  to  all  as  the  abode  of 
peace.  With  this  hate  in  his  heart  and  this 
ideal  in  his  brain  the  modern  man  writes 
his  stories  of  life.  They  are  not  always 
pleasant,  but  they  are  generally  true,  and 
always  they  provoke  thought. 

This  element  of  sad  severity  will  change 
as  conditions  change  for  the  common  man, 
but  the  larger  element  of  sincerity,  with  re 
sulting  contemporaneousness,  will  remain. 
Fiction,  to  be  important  and  successful, 
must  be  original  and  suited  to  its  time.  As 
the  times  change,  fiction  will  change.  This 
must  always  be  remembered. 

The  surest  way  to  write  for  all  time  is  to 
embody  the  present  in  the  finest  form  with 
the  highest  sincerity  and  with  the  frankest 
truthfulness.  The  surest  way  to  write  for 
other  lands  is  to  be  true  to  our  own  land  and 
true  to  the  scenes  and  people  we  love,  and 
love  in  a  human  and  direct  way  without 
being  educated  up  to  it  or  down  to  it. 

The  people  can  never  be  educated  to  love 
the  past,  to  love  Shakespeare  and  Homer. 


54  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Students  may  be  taught  to  believe  they 
believe,  but  the  great  masses  of  American 
readers  want  the  modern  comment.  They 
want  the  past  colored  to  suit  their  ideas  of 
life,  —  that  is,  the  readers  of  romance ;  on 
higher  planes  of  reading  they  want  sincere 
delineation  of  modern  life  and  thought,  and 
Shakespeare,  Wordsworth,  Dante,  Milton, 
are  fading  away  into  mere  names,  —  books 
we  should  read  but  seldom  do. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  fiction  of 
the  immediate  future   will   be   the  working 
out  of   plans    already  in    hand.     There  is 
small   prophecy  in  it,  after   all.     We  have 
but  to  examine  the  ground  closely,  and  we 
see  the  green  shoots  of  the  coming  harvest 
beneath  our  very  feet.     We   have   but    to 
examine   closely  the    most    na'ive   and 
local  of  our  novels,  and  the  coming 
literature  will  be  foreshadowed 
there.     The  local  novelist 
seems  to  be  the  com 
ing    woman !     Lo 
cal     color   is 
the  royal 
robe. 


V. 
LOCAL    COLOR    IN    ART. 


LOCAL  color  in  fiction  is 

demonstrably  the  life  of 
LOCAL  COLOR 

fiction.      It  is   the   native 

IN   ART.  .        ..„ 

element,  the  differentiating 
element.  It  corresponds  to  the  endless  and 
vital  charm  of  individual  peculiarity.  It  is  the 
differences  which  interest  us ;  the  similarities 
do  not  please,  do  not  forever  stimulate  and 
feed  as  do  the  differences.  Literature  would 
die  of  dry  rot  if  it  chronicled  the  similarities 
only,  or  even  largely. 

Historically,  the  local  color  of  a  poet  or 
dramatist  is  of  the  greatest  value.  The 
charm  of  Horace  is  the  side  light  he  throws 
on  the  manners  and  customs  of  his  time. 
The  vital  in  Homer  lies,  after  all,  in  his 
local  color,  not  in  his  abstractions.  Because 
the  sagas  of  the  North  delineate  more 
exactly  how  men  and  women  lived  and 
wrought  in  those  days,  therefore  they  have 
always  appealed  to  me  with  infinitely  greater 
power  than  Homer. 


58  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Similarly,  it  is  the  local  color  of  Chaucer 
that  interests  us  to-day.  We  yawn  over  his 
tales  of  chivalry  which  were  in  the  manner 
of  his  contemporaries,  but  the  Miller  and 
the  Priest  interest  us.  Wherever  the  man 
of  the  past  in  literature  showed  us  what  he 
really  lived  and  loved,  he  moves  us.  We 
understand  him,  and  we  really  feel  an  in 
terest  in  him. 

Historically,  local  color  has  gained  in 
beauty  and  suggestiveness  and  humanity 
from  Chaucer  down  to  the  present  day. 
Each  age  has  embodied  more  and  more  of 
its  actual  life  and  social  conformation  until 
the  differentiating  qualities  of  modern  art 
make  the  best  paintings  of  Norway  as  dis 
tinct  in  local  color  as  its  fiction  is  vital 
and  indigenous. 

Every  great  moving  literature  to-day  is 
full  of  local  color.  It  is  this  element  which 
puts  the  Norwegian  and  Russian  almost  at 
the  very  summit  of  modern  novel  writing, 
and  it  is  the  comparative  lack  of  this  distinc 
tive  flavor  which  makes  the  English  and 
French  take  a  lower  place  in  truth  and 
sincerity. 


LOCAL  COLOR  IN  ART.  59 

Everywhere  all  over  the  modern  European 
world,  men  are  writing  novels  and  dramas  as 
naturally  as  the  grass  or  corn  or  flax  grows. 
The  Provencal,  the  Hun,  the  Catalonian,  the 
Norwegian,  is  getting  a  hearing.  This  liter 
ature  is  not  the  literature  of  scholars ;  it  is 
the  literature  of  lovers  and  doers ;  of  men 
who  love  the  modern  and  who  have  not  been 
educated  to  despise  common  things. 

These  men  are  speaking  a  new  word. 
They  are  not  hunting  themes,  they  are  strug 
gling  to  express. 

Conventional  criticism  does  not  hamper  or 
confine  them.  They  are  rooted  in  the  soil. 
They  stand  among  the  corn-fields  and  they 
dig-  in  the  peat-bogs.  They  concern  them 
selves  with  modern  and  very  present  words 
and  themes,  and  they  have  brought  a  new 
word  which  is  to  divide  in  half  the  domain 
of  beauty. 

They  have  made  art  the  re-creation  of  the 
beautiful  and  the  significant.  Mere  beauty 
no  longer  suffices.  Beauty  is  the  world-old 
aristocrat  who  has  taken  for  mate  this 
mighty  young  plebeian  Significance.  Their 
child  is  to  be  the  most  human  and  humane 
literature  ever  seen. 


60  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

It  has  taken  the  United  States  longer  to 
achieve  independence  of  English  critics 
than  it  took  to  free  itself  from  old-world 
political  and  economic  rule.  Its  political 
freedom  was  won,  not  by  its  gentlemen  and 
scholars,  but  by  its  yeomanry;  and  in  the 
same  way  our  national  literature  will  come 
in  its  fulness  when  the  common  American 
rises  spontaneously  to  the  expression  of  his 
concept  of  life. 

The  fatal  blight  upon  most  American  art 
has  been,  and  is  to-day,  its  imitative  quality, 
which  has  kept  it  characterless  and  facti 
tious,  —  a  forced  rose-culture  rather  than  the 
free  flowering  of  native  plants. 

Our  writers  despised  or  feared  the  home 
market.  They  rested  their  immortality  upon 
the  "  universal  theme,"  which  was  a  theme 
of  no  interest  to  the  public  and  of  small 
interest  to  themselves. 

During  the  first  century  and  a  half,  our 
literature  had  very  little  national  color.  It 
was  quite  like  the  utterance  of  corresponding 
classes  in  England.  But  at  length  Bryant  and 
Cooper  felt  the  influence  of  our  mighty  forests 
and  prairies.  Whittier  uttered  something  of 


LOCAL  COLOR  IN  ART.  61 

New  England  boy-life,  and  Thoreau  prodded 
about  among  newly  discovered  wonders,  and 
the  American  literature  got  its  first  start. 

Under  the  influence  of  Cooper  came  the 
stories  of  wild  life  from  Texas,  from  Ohio, 
and  from  Illinois.  The  wild,  rough  settle 
ments  could  not  produce  smooth  and  cultured 
poems  or  stories ;  they  only  furnished  forth 
rough-and-ready  anecdotes,  but  in  these 
stories  there  were  hints  of  something  fine 
and  strong  and  native. 

As  the  settlements  increased  in  size,  as 
the  pressure  of  the  forest  and  the  wild  beast 
grew  less,  expression  rose  to  a  higher  plane ; 
men  softened  in  speech  and  manner.  All 
preparations  were  being  made  for  a  local 
literature  raised  to  the  level  of  art. 

The  Pacific  slope  was  first  in  the  line.  By 
the  exceptional  interest  which  the  world  took 
in  the  life  of  the  gold  fields,  and  by  the  for 
ward  urge  which  seems  always  to  surprise  the 
pessimist  and  the  scholiast,  two  young  men 
were  plunged  into  that  wild  life,  led  across 
the  plains  set  in  the  shadow  of  Mount  Shasta, 
and  local  literature  received  its  first  great 
marked,  decided  impetus. 


62 


CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 


To-day  we  have  in  America,  at  last,  a 
group  of  writers  who  have  no  suspicion  of 
imitation  laid  upon  them.  Whatever  faults 
they  may  be  supposed  to  have,  they  are  at 
any  rate,  themselves.  American  critics  can 
depend  upon  a  characteristic  American  liter 
ature  of  fiction  and  the  drama  from  these 
people. 

The  corn  has  flowered,  and  the  cotton-boll 
has  broken  into  speech. 

Local  color— what  is  it?  It  means  that 
the  writer  spontaneously  reflects  the  life 
hich  goes  on  around  him.  It  is  natural 
nd  unstrained  art. 

It  is,  in  a  sense,  unnatural  and  artificial  to 
find  an  American  writing  novels  of  Russia 
or  Spain  or  the  Holy  Land.  He  cannot  hope 
to  do  it  so  well  as  the  native.  The  best  he 
can  look  for  is  that  poor  word  of  praise, 
"  He  does  it  very  well,  considering  he  is  an 
alien." 

If  a  young  writer  complain  that  there  are 
no  themes  at  home,  that  he  is  forced  to  go 
abroad  for  prospective  and  romance,  I  an 
swer  there  is  something  wrong  in  his  educa 
tion  or  his  perceptive  faculty.  Often  he  is 


LOCAL  COLOR  IN  ART.  63 

more  anxious  to  win  a  money  success  than 
to  be  patiently  one  of  art's  unhurried  devotees. 

I  can  sympathize  with  him,  however,  for 
criticism  has  not  helped  him  to  be  true. 
Criticism  of  the  formal  kind  and  spontane 
ous  expression  are  always  at  war,  like  the 
old  man  and  the  youth.  They  may  politely 
conceal  it,  but  they  are  mutually  destructive. 

Old  men  naturally  love  the  past ;  the  books 
they  read  are  the  master-pieces ;  the  great 
men  are  all  dying  off,  they  say ;  the  young  man 
should  treat  lofty  and  universal  themes,  as 
they  used  to  do.  These  localisms  are  petty. 
These  truths  are  disturbing.  Youth  annoys 
them.  Spontaneousness  is  formlessness,  and 
the  criticism  that  does  not  call  for  the  ab 
stract  and  the  ideal  and  the  beautiful  is  lead 
ing  to  destruction,  these  critics  say. 

And  yet  there  is  a  criticism  which  helps, 
which  tends  to  keep  a  writer  at  his  best ;  but 
such  criticism  recognizes  the  dynamic  force 
of  a  literature,  and  tries  to  spy  out  tenden 
cies.  This  criticism  to-day  sees  that  local 
color  means  national  character,  and  is  aid 
ing  the  young  writer  to  treat  his  themes  in 
the  best  art. 


64  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

I  assert  it  is  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  for  a  man  to  love  his  native  land 
and  his  native,  intimate  surroundings.  Born 
into  a  web  of  circumstances,  enmeshed  in 
common  life,  the  youthful  artist  begins  to 
think.  All  the  associations  of  that  child 
hood  and  the  love-life  of  youth  combine  to 
make  that  web  of  common  affairs,  threads  of 
silver  and  beads  of  gold;  the  near-at-hand 
things  are  the  dearest  and  sweetest  after  all. 

As  the  reader  will  see,  I  am  using  local 
color  to  mean  something  more  than  a  forced 
study  of  the  picturesque  scenery  of  a  State. 

Local  color  in  a  novel  means  that  it  has 
such  quality  of  texture  and  back-ground  that 
it  could  not  have  been  written  in  any  other 
place  or  by  any  one  else  than  a  native. 

It  means  a  statement  of  life  as  indigenous 
as  the  plant-growth.  It  means  that  the  pic 
turesque  shall  not  be  seen  by  the  author,  — 
that  every  tree  and  bird  and  mountain  shall 
be  dear  and  companionable  and  necessary, 
not  picturesque  ;  the  tourist  cannot  write  the 
local  novel. 

From  this  it  follows  that  local  color  must 
not  be  put  in  for  the  sake  of  local  color.  It 


LOCAL  COLOR  IN  ART.  65 

must  go  in,  it  will  go  in,  because  the  writer 
naturally  carries  it  with  him  half  uncon 
sciously,  or  conscious  only  of  its  signifi 
cance,  its  interest  to  him. 

He  must  not  stop  to  think  whether  it  will 
interest  the  reader  or  not.  He  must  be 
loyal  to  himself,  and  put  it  in  because  he 
loves  it.  If  he  is  an  artist,  he  will  make  his 
reader  feel  it  through  his  own  emotion. 

What  we  should  stand  for  is  not  univer 
sality  of  theme,  but  beauty  and  strength  of 
treatment,  leaving  the  writer  to  choose  his 
theme  because  he  loves  it. 

Here  is  the  work  of  the  critic.  Recog 
nizing  that  the  theme  is  beyond  his  control, 
let  him  aid  the  young  writer  to  delineate 
simply  and  with  unwavering  strokes.  Even 
here  the  critic  can  do  little,  if  he  is  possessed 
of  the  idea  that  the  young  writer  of  to-day 
should  model  upon  Addison  or  Macaulay  or 
Swift. 

There  are  new  criterions  to-day  in  writing 
as  in  painting,  and  individual  expression  is 
the  aim.  The  critic  can  do  much  to  aid  a 
young  writer  to  not  copy  an  old  master  or 
any  other  master.  Good  criticism  can  aid 
S 


66  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

him  to  be  vivid  and  simple  and  unhackneyed 
in  his  technique,  the  subject  is  his  own 
affair. 

I  agree  with  him  who  says,  Local  art  must 
be  raised  to  the  highest  levels  in  its  expres 
sion ;  but  in  aiding  this  perfection  of  tech 
nique  we  must  be  careful  not  to  cut  into 
the  artist's  spontaneity.     To  apply 
ancient  dogmas  of  criticism  to 
our  life  and  literature  would 
be  benumbing  to   ar 
tist  and  fatal  to 
his  art. 


VI. 
THE    LOCAL    NOVEL. 


THE     local      novel 
seems  to  be  the  heir- 

THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  . 

apparent  to  the  king 
dom  of  poesy.  It  is  already  the  most  prom 
ising  of  all  literary  attempts  to-day ;  certainly 
it  is  the  most  sincere.  It  seems  but  begin 
ning  its  work.  It  is  "hopelessly  contem 
poraneous  ; "  that  is  its  strength.  It  is  (at 
its  best)  unaffected,  natural,  emotional.  It  is 
sure  to  become  all-powerful.  It  will  redeem 
American  literature,  as  it  has  already  re 
deemed  the  South  from  its  conventional  and 
highly  wrought  romanticism. 

By  reason  of  growing  truth  and  sincerity 
the  fiction  of  the  South  has  risen  from  the 
dead.  It  is  now  in  the  spring  season  of 
shooting  wilding  plants  and  timorous  blades 
of  sown  grains.  Its  future  is  assured.  Its 
soil  is  fertilized  with  the  blood  of  true  men. 
Its  women  are  the  repositories  of  great,  vital, 
sincere,  emotional  experiences  which  will 
inevitably  appear  in  their  children,  and  at 


70  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

last  in  art,  and  especially  in  fiction.  The 
Southern  people  are  in  the  midst  of  a  battle 
more  momentous  than  the  Rebellion,  because 
it  is  the  result  of  the  Rebellion ;  that  is,  the 
battle  of  intrenched  privilege  against  the 
swiftly-spreading  democratic  idea  of  equality 
before  the  law  and  in  the  face  of  nature. 

They  have  a  terribly,  mightily  dramatic 
race-problem  on  their  hands.  The  South  is 
the  meeting-place  of  winds.  It  is  the  seat 
of  swift  and  almost  incalculable  change  ;  and 
this  change,  this  battle,  this  strife  of  invisible 
powers,  is  about  to  enter  their  fiction.. 

The|4egro  has  already  entered  it.  He  has 
brought  a  musical  speech  to  his  masters,  and 
to  the  new  fiction.  He  has  brought  a  strange 
and  pleading  song  into  music.  The  finest 
writers  of  the  New  South  already  find  him  a 
never-failing  source  of  interest.  He  is  not, 
of  course,  the  only  subject  of  Southern  fic 
tion,  nor  even  the  principal  figure  ;  but  he  is 
a  necessary  part,  and  a  most  absorbingly 
interesting  part. 

The  future  of  fiction  in  the  South  will  also 
depict  the  unreconstructed  rebel  unreser 
vedly,  and  the  race-problem  without  hate 


THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  71 

or  contempt  or  anger;  for  the  highest  art 
will  be  the  most  catholic  in  its  sympathy. 
It  will  delineate  vast  contending  forces,  and 
it  will  be  a  great  literature. 

The  ftegro  will  enter  the  fiction  of  the 
South,  first,  as  subject ;  second,  as  artist  in 
his  own  right.  His  first  attempts  will  be  imi 
tative,  but  he  will  yet  utter  himself,  as  surely 
as  he  lives.  He  will  contribute  a  poetry  and 
a  novel  as  peculiarly  his  own  as  the  songs 
he  sings.  He  may  appear,  also,  in  a  strange 
half-song,  half-chant,  and  possibly  in  a 
drama  peculiar  to  himself;  but  in  some 
form  of  fiction  he  will  surely  utter  the 
sombre  and  darkly-florid  genius  for  emo 
tional  utterance  which  characterizes  him. 

In  the  North  the  novel  will  continue  local 
for  some  time  to  come.  It  will  delineate  the 
intimate  life  and  speech  of  every  section  of  our 
enormous  and  widely  scattered  republic.  It 
will  catch  and  fix  in  charcoal  the  changing, 
assimilating  races,  delineating  the  pathos 
and  humor  and  the  infinite  drama  of  their 
swift  adjustment  to  new  conditions.  Cali 
fornia,  New  Mexico,  Idaho,  Utah,  Oregon, 
each  wonderful  locality  in  our  Nation  of 


72  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Nations  will  yet  find  its  native  utterance. 
The  superficial  work  of  the  tourist  and 
outsider  will  not  do.  The  real  novelist  of 
these  sections  is  walking  behind  the  plow  or 
trudging  to  school  in  these  splendid  potential 
environments. 

This  local  movement  will  include  the  cities 
as  well,  and  St.  Louis,  Chicago,  San  Fran 
cisco,  will  be  delineated  by  artists  born  of 
each  city,  whose  work  will  be  so  true  that  it 
could  not  have  been  written  by  any  one  from 
the  outside.  The  real  utterance  of  a  city  or 
a  locality  can  only  come  when  a  writer  is 
born  out  of  its  intimate  heart.  To  such  an 
one,  nothing  will  be  "  strange  "  or  "  pictur 
esque  ; "  all  will  be  familiar,  and  full  of 
significance  or  beauty.  The  novel  of  the 
slums  must  be  written  by  one  who  has 
played  there  as  a  child,  and  taken  part  in 
all  its  amusements  ;  not  out  of  curiosity,  but 
out  of  pleasure  seeking.  It  cannot  be  done 
from  above  nor  from  the  outside.  It  must 
be  done  out  of  a  full  heart  and  without 
seeking  for  effect. 

The  artist  should  not  look  abroad  to  see 
how  others  are  succeeding.  Success  does 


THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  73 

not  always  measure  merit.  It  took  nearly  a 
third  of  a  century  for  Whitman  and  Monet 
to  be  recognized.  The  great  artist  never 
conforms.  He  does  not  trail  after  some 
other  man's  success.  He  works  out  his 
individual  perception  of  things. 

The  contrast  of  city  and  country,  every 
where  growing  sharper,  will  find  its  reflec 
tion  in  this  local  novel  of  the  immediate 
future,  —  the  same  tragedies  and  comedies, 
with  the  essential  difference  called  local 
color,  and  taking  place  all  over  the  land, 
wherever  cities  arise  like  fungi,  unhealthy, 
yet  absorbing  as  subjects  of  fictional  art. 

As  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  the  drama 
will  join  the  novel  in  this  study  of  local 
conditions.  It  will  be  derived  from  fiction, 
and  in  many  cases  the  dramatist  and  novelist 
will  be  the  same  person.  In  all  cases  the 
sincerity  of  the  author's  love  for  his  scenes 
and  characters  will  find  expression  in  tender 
care  for  truth,  and  there  will  be  made  to 
pass  before  our  eyes  wonderfully  suggestive 
pictures  of  other  lives  and  landscapes.  The 
drama  will  grow  in  dignity  and  importance 
along  these  lines. 


74  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Both  drama  and  novel  will  be  colloquial. 
This  does  not  mean  that  they  will  be  exclu 
sively  in  the  dialects,  but  the  actual  speech 
of  the  people  of  each  locality  will  unques 
tionably  be  studied  more  closely  than  ever 
before.  Dialect  is  the  life  of  a  language, 
precisely  as  the  common  people  of  the 
nation  form  the  sustaining  power  of  its 
social  life  and  art. 

And  so  in  the  novel,  in  the  short  story, 
and  in  the  drama  —  by  the  work  of  a  multi 
tude  of  loving  artists,  not  by  the  work  of  an 
over-topping  personality  —  will  the  intimate 
social,  individual  life  of  the  nation  be  de 
picted.  Before  this  localism  shall  pass  away, 
such  a  study  will  have  been  made  of  this 
land  and  people  as  has  never  been  made  by 
any  other  age  or  social  group,  —  a  literature 
from  the  plain  people,  reflecting  their  unre 
strained  outlook  on  life,  subtle  in  speech 
and  color,  humane  beyond  precedent,  humor 
ous,  varied,  simple  in  means,  lucid  as  water, 
searching  as  sunlight. 

To  one  who  believes  each  age  to  be  its 
own  best  interpreter,  the  idea  of  "decay 
of  fiction"  never  comes.  That  which  the 


THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  75 

absolutist  takes  for  decay  is  merely  change. 
The  conservative  fears  change ;  the  radical 
welcomes  it.  The  conservative  tries  to  ar 
gue  that  fundamentals  cannot  change ;  that 
they  are  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  to 
morrow.  If  that  were  true,  then  a  sorrowful 
outlook  on  the  future  would  be  natural. 
Such  permanency  would  be  death.  Life 
means  change. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  minute  differenti 
ations  of  literature  which  the  conservative 
calls  its  non-essentials,  are  really  its  essen 
tials.  Vitality  and  growth  are  in  these  "  non- 
essentials.  "  1 1  is  the  difference  in  characters, 
not  their  similarity,  which  is  forever  interest 
ing.  It  is  the  subtle  coloring  individuality 
gives  which  vitalizes  landscape  art,  and  so 
it  is  the  subtle  differences  in  the  interpre 
tation  of  life  which  each  age  gives  that 
vitalizes  its  literature  and  makes  it  its 
own. 

The  individuality  of  the  artist  is  the  saving 
grace  of  art ;  and  landscape  painting  will 
not  be  fantastic  so  long  as  men  study  na 
ture.  It  will  never  be  mere  reproduction 
so  long  as  the  artist  represents  it  as  he  sees 


76  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

it.  The  fact  will  correct  the  fantasy.  The 
artist  will  color  the  fact. 

The  business  of  the  present  is  not  to  ex 
press  fundamentals,  but  to  sincerely  present 
its  own  minute  and  characteristic  interpre 
tation  of  life.  This  point  cannot  be  too  often 
insisted  upon.  Unless  a  writer  add  some 
thing  to  the  literature  of  his  race,  has  he  jus 
tification?  Is  there  glory  in  imitation?  Is 
the  painter  greatest  who  copies  old  masters, 
or  is  it  more  praiseworthy  to  embody  an 
original  conception  ?  These  are  very  impor 
tant  questions  for  the  young  artist. 

To  perceive  the  hopelessness  of  absolutism 
in  literature,  you  have  but  to  stop  a  moment 
to  think.  Admit  that  there  are  perfect  mod 
els  to  which  must  be  referred  all  subsequent 
writing,  and  we  are  committed  to  a  barren 
round  of  hopeless  imitations.  The  young 
writer  is  disheartened  or  drawn  off  into  imi 
tations,  and  ruined  for  any  real  expression. 
This  way  of  looking  at  literature  produced 
our  Barlows  and  Coltons  and  Hillhouses, 
with  their  "colossi  of  cotton-batting,"  and  it 
produces  blank-verse  dramas  to-day. 

But  the  relativists  in  art  are  full  of  hope. 


THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  77 

They  see  that  life  is  the  model,  —  or,  rather, 
that  each  man  stands  accountable  to  himself 
first,  and  to  the  perceived  fact  of  life  second. 
Life  is  always  changing,  and  literature 
changes  with  it.  It  never  decays;  it  changes. 
Poetry  —  that  is  to  say  impassioned  personal 
outlook  on  life  —  is  in  no  more  danger  of  ex 
tinction  to-day  than  in  the  days  of  Edmund 
Spenser.  The  American  novel  will  continue 
to  grow  in  truth  to  American  life  without  re 
gard  to  the  form  and  spirit  of  the  novel  or 
drama  of  the  past.  Consciously  or  uncon 
sciously,  the  point  of  view  of  the  modern 
writer  is  that  of  the  veritist,  or  truth  stater. 

Once  out  of  the  period  of  tutelage,  it  is 
natural  for  youth  to  overleap  barriers.  He 
naturally  discards  the  wig  and  cloak  of  his 
grandfathers.  He  comes  at  last  to  reject, 
perhaps  a  little  too  brusquely,  the  models 
which  conservatism  regards  with  awe.  He 
respects  them  as  history,  but  he  has  life, 
abounding,  fresh,  contiguous  life ;  life  that 
stings  and  smothers  and  overwhelms  and  ex 
alts,  like  the  salt,  green,  snow-tipped  ocean 
surf ;  life,  with  its  terrors  and  triumphs,  right 
here  and  now ;  its  infinite  drama,  its  allure- 


78  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

ment,  its  battle,  and  its  victories.  Life  is 
the  model,  truth  is  the  master,  the  heart  of 
the  man  himself  his  motive  power.  The 
pleasure  of  re-creating  in  the  image  of  na 
ture  is  the  artist's  unfailing  reward. 

To  him  who  sees  that  difference,  not  simi 
larity,  is  the  vitalizing  quality,  there  is  no 
sorrow  at  change.  The  future  will  take  care 
of  itself.  In  the  space  of  that  word  "  differ 
ence  "  lies  all  the  infinite  range  of  future  art. 
Some  elements  are  comparatively  unchang 
ing.  The  snow  will  fall,  spring  will  come, 
men  and  women  love,  the  stars  will  rise  and 
set,  and  grass  return  again  and  again  in 
vast  rhythms  of  green,  but  society  will  not 
be  the  same. 

The  physical  conformation  of  our  nation 
will  change.  It  will  lose  its  wildness,  its 
austerity.  Its  unpeopled  plains  will  pass 
away,  and  gardens  will  bloom  where  the  hot 
sand  now  drifts.  Cities  will  rise  where  now 
the  elk  and  the  mountain  lions  are.  Swifter 
means  of  transportation  will  bring  the  lives 
of  different  sections  into  closer  relationship. 
It  will  tend  to  equalize  intellectual  opportuni 
ties.  The  physical  and  mental  life  of  men 


THE  LOCAL  NOVEL.  79 

and  women  will  be  changed,  the  relation  of 
man  to  man,  and  man  to  woman,  will  change 
in  detail,  and  the  fiction  of  the  future  will 
express  these  changes. 

To  the  veritist,  therefore,  the  present  is 
the  vital  theme.     The  past  is  dead,  and  the 
future  can  be  trusted  to  look   after  itself. 
The  young  men  and  maidens  of  that  time 
will  find  the  stars  of  their  present  brighter 
than  the  stars  of  '92,  the  people  around  them 
more  absorbing  than  books,  and  their  own 
outlook  on  life  more   reasonable  than 
that  of  dead  men.     Their  writing 
and  painting,  in  proportion  to 
its  vitality  and  importance, 
will  reflect  this,  their 
natural  attitude,  to 
ward  life  and 
history. 


VII. 
THE   DRIFT   OF  THE   DRAMA. 


THE    American    drama, 

VII 

from  the  earliest  time  of 

its  entry  into  the  colonies, 

THE   DRAMA.          ^     intensified     and    car. 

ried  to  the  farthest  absurdity  the  principle 
of  dependence  upon  other  times  and  coun 
tries  for  models.  It  has  reflected  at  various 
times  Shakespeare,  Dryden,  Bulwer,  Schil 
ler,  Sheridan,  Scott,  and  Dickens,  not  to 
speak  of  other  and  unnameable  depths  of 
imitation. 

Even  when  impassioned  genius  rose  to  the 
delineation  of  native  scenes,  no  landscape 
was  remote  enough  or  wild  enough  to  keep 
out  the  tender  English  maiden  and  the 
villain  in  top-coat  and  riding-boots.  The 
question  of  inheritance,  the  production  of 
lost  wills,  and  the  final  restoration  of  the 
heroine  to  her  own  true  lover  went  on  quite 
in  the  standard  British  manner. 

Once  or  twice,  however,  by  the  sheer 
force  of  the  subject,  conventions  were  driven 


84  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

out.  But  these  instances  simply  throw  into 
greater  contrast  the  universal  sterility  of 
invention. 

Ephemeral  dramas  of  Revolutionary  times 
and  plays  of  American  society,  wherein 
the  characters  were  all  ticketed  as  Master 
Lively,  Simon  Solemn,  or  Mistress  Long 
Tongue,  abounded  up  to  1840;  the  histor 
ical  dramas  of  this  period  were  mere  spec 
tacles,  and  had  no  literary  value  of  any 
sort. 

Historically,  the  Civil  War  marks  an 
epoch  in  the  drama,  as  it  does  in  poetry 
and  the  novel.  It  divided  the  old  from  the 
new,  not  in  abrupt  separation,  but  with  the 
coming  of  that  mighty  outburst  of  national 
passion  the  old  was  thrown  into  pale  ob 
scurity,  to  linger  on  for  a  while,  but  to 
lose  vitality  as  the  New  moved  inexorably 
forward. 

The  border  drama  seems  to  have  been  the 
first  decided  indication  of  Americanism  in 
the  drama.  It  sprang  almost  directly  from 
the  novel  of  adventure  represented  by  Cooper 
and  Bird  and  Webber,  and  was  equally  gory. 
Of  this  sort  was  "  Tamora  "  and  *•  Shot  in 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA.      85 

the  Eye."  However,  the  tender,  fainting 
maiden  and  the  irreproachable  lover  were 
always  found  in  even  these  mid-forest  com 
plications.  It  had  the  merit,  to  be  sure,  of 
being  in  prose,  and  at  times  approached  a 
study  of  life. 

Later,  the  novels  of  Bret  Harte  and  Joa- 
quin  Miller  gave  a  higher  turn  to  these 
border  dramas,  and  the  Indian  took  a  subor 
dinate  position,  the  miner  and  desperado 
holding  the  centre  of  the  stage.  As  these 
novels  were  immensely  higher  in  literary 
style  and  arrangement,  so  the  dramas  mod 
elled  upon  them  could  not  entirely  escape 
being  touched  here  and  there  with  truth  and 
poetry. 

It  is  a  curious  consideration  that  people 
will  endure,  upon  the  stage,  absurdities  which 
would  disgust  them  in  the  novel.  The  stage 
has  always  been  conventional,  symbolical,  at 
its  best ;  and  the  swift  movement,  the  glare 
of  lights,  and  the  atmosphere  of  artificiality 
in  the  decoration,  have  bewildered  the  judg 
ment,  and  made  the  very  worst  melodrama 
disgracefully  acceptable  to  large  masses  of 
fairly  well  educated  people. 


86  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

We  find,  therefore,  a  public  apparently 
willing  to  pay  for  the  worn-out  fashions  of 
the  novel,  sitting  with  small  uneasiness 
before  dramatic  writing  which  is  below  the 
level  of  even  the  weekly  story  papers. 

The  ambitious  "  society  plays  "  are  for  the 
most  part  on  the  level  of  the  "  Saturday  Eve 
ning  Romancer."  Their  heroes  never  appear 
without  creases  in  their  trousers,  and  their 
heroines  are  actuated  by  the  same  character 
less  and  flabby  sentiment  all  heroines  have 
manifested  for  centuries ;  and  the  men  and 
women  of  both  melodrama  and  society  plays 
appear  to  be  sexually  diseased,  precisely  as  in 
the  French  novel  and  the  cheap  story  paper. 

Where  the  technique  is  better,  the  outlook 
on  life  is  hopelessly  false  and  pathologic,  — 
quite  on  the  model  of  the  satyriasic  French 
novelists,  who  seem  to  find  healthy  human 
feeling  a  bore,  and  who  scent  a  suggestive 
situation  with  the  nostrils  of  a  vulture. 
Thus,  while  the  American  novel  has  grown 
steadily  more  truthful  and  wholesome,  the 
drama,  with  several  notable  exceptions,  has 
kept  the  low  level  of  imitative  English  sensa 
tionalism  and  sterile  French  sexualism. 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA       87 

While  the  above  statement  of  the  low  plane 
of  the  drama  is  true  in  general,  there  are 
indubitable  signs  of  change,  and  change  for 
the  better ;  and  it  requires  little  prophetic 
insight  to  predict  that  the  drama  is  soon  to 
take  its  place  beside  the  novel. 

The  border  drama  seems  to  have  lodged 
at  last  in  the  ten  cent  theatres.  The  English 
melodrama  is  a  great  deal  discredited,  almost 
rejected.  The  ephemeral  farce-comedy  seems 
to  be  losing  its  dominion,  being  superseded 
on  the  serious  side  by  character  comedy,  and 
on  its  amusement  side  by  the  comic  opera, 
which  occasionally  really  amuses  people. 

The  one-part  play  still  holds  a  place  on 
the  stage,  by  reason  of  the  survival  of  the 
"  star,"  but  the  public  is  demanding  some 
thing  more  than  a  monologue.  And  one  by 
one  the  one-part  plays  are  discredited  and  die 
out.  The  better  public  demand  a  play  which 
shall  present  in  some  sort  the  proportions  of 
art. 

Burlesque  seems  to  have  been  filling  in  a 
transition  state.  When  old  forms  are  decay 
ing,  they  are  always  food  for  the  satirists. 
It  is  not  without  reason  that  the  farce-comedy 


88  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

writers  have  held  the  stage  for  ten  years. 
They  had  a  work  to  do,  and  they  have  done 
it  merrily  and  well.  It  was  their  business  to 
invalidate  the  absurd  sentiment  and  false 
action  of  the  old  plays.  It  is  a  very  good 
sign  to  see  an  audience  laugh  heartily  when 
the  mock  heavy  villain  walks  on  dragging  his 
toes,  and  smiling  sardonically.  The  burles- 
quer  has  made  the  strut  and  shout  of  old- 
time  tragedy  absurd,  and  has  weakened  the 
bonds  which  kept  the  school-bred  American 
enslaved  to  the  idea  that  Shakespeare  and 
the  glorious  old  comedies  ended  the  forms  of 
the  drama.  The  burlesquer  respects  nothing 
but  the  truth,  which  he  cannot  distort. 

There  could  be  no  progress,  no  native  out 
put,  so  long  as  the  past  lay  like  a  brazen 
wall  across  the  way  of  the  young  dramatist. 
The  free  untrodden  paths  do  not  lie  in  the 
direction  of.  the  past.  Shakespeare  and 
Moliere  are  to  be  ignored  as  models,  pre 
cisely  as  they  expressed  themselves  in  youth 
ful  unconcern  of  yEschylus  and  Sophocles. 

The  undue  worship  of  Shakespeare  or  any 
other  dramatist  is  fatal  to  individual  creation. 
There  can  be  only  one  creative  model,  and 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA.      89 

that  is  life.  Truth  and  sincerity  of  purpose 
on  the  part  of  the  writer,  if  he  be  of  gen 
uinely  creative  temper,  will  lead  him  to  the 
untrod  spaces  without  theory  and  without 
slavery. 

The  American  realist  should  stand  for  a 
liberated  art.  If  this  means  emancipation 
from  Shakespeare,  or  Scott,  or  Hugo,  very 
well ;  but  we  should  not  argue  for  a  change 
of  masters.  We  should  condemn  with  equal 
severity  imitation  of  a  living  master  like 
Ibsen. 

A  work  of  art  is  an  individual  thing,  —  a 
relation  of  one  human  soul  to  life,  emotion 
ally  expressed.  The  artist  will  find  many 
having  the  same  outlook  substantially,  but 
as  an  artist  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  that. 
His  only  obligation  is  to  be  true  to  life  as  it 
seems  to  him  from  his  personal  angle  of 
vision. 

It  may  be  said  again  at  this  point  that  the 
past  is  not  vital  to  the  millions  of  America. 
Critics  of  the  scholastic  sort,  with  their 
natural  or  acquired  conservatism,  have  half- 
convinced  a  certain  class  of  Americans 
(small,  in  relation  to  sixty  millions  of  people) 


90  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

that  there  are  dramatic  gods  in  the  past, 
before  whom  all  intellects  and  especially 
all  creative  youth,  are  to  bow  down;  but 
the  great  body  of  American  readers  rebel 
against  such  intellectual  slavery.  It  needs 
the  illuminating  genius  of  Edwin  Booth  to 
make  "Hamlet"  endurable.  These  facts  are 
admitted  by  the  theatre  manager,  who  has 
his  uses,  after  all.  With  him  "  Shakespeare 
spells  failure."  The  public  prefers  "  Held 
by  the  Enemy  "  and  "  The  Lost  Paradise  " 
and  "Shore  Acres"  to  "Hamlet,",— which 
is  their  privilege. 

This  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  great 
ness  of  Shakespeare  any  more  than  it  has 
with  the  grandeur  of  ./Eschylus.  It  is  simply 
proof  that  neither  of  these  great  figures  are 
part  of  our  lives  to-day.  They  are  educa 
tional  in  effect.  They  illuminate  the  past 
with  marvellous,  inestimable  light;  but  the 
sorrows  of  a  child,  the  story  of  a  struggling, 
hopeless  $legro,  or  the  parting  of  an  old 
Hoosier  farmer  from  his  daughter,  gets 
closer  to  us,  touches  us  in  a  more  vital  way, 
than  the  death  of  Hamlet  or  the  passion  of 
Clytemnestra. 

L 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA.      91 

A  perception  of  these  changes  in  values  is 
necessary  to  the  modern  dramatist.  Natu 
rally,  if  he  proceeds  upon  what  he  believes 
to  be  the  popular  track,  without  the  motive 
which  is  absolutely  necessary  for  good  art, 
of  expressing  his  own  individual  feeling,  he 
must  recognize  this  change  of  sentiment. 
The  feeling  of  the  average  man  must  be 
taken  into  account,  rather  than  the  judgment 
of  the  pedant. 

It  may  be  sorrowful  to  the  student  con 
servative  and  to  the  aristocratic  party  in 
literature  to  see  old  dramatic  forms  draw 
off,  but  to  others  it  is  a  sign  of  liberty  and 
of  native  new  birth.  It  is  as  natural  as  the 
growth  of  grass.  The  spontaneous  out 
growth  of  native  art  may  modify  old  forms, 
it  must  not  be  bound  by  them. 

The  fight  is  not  between  Shakespeare  and 
Sheridan  on  one  side,  and  the  forces  repre 
sented  by  V  aides  and  Ibsen  and  Howells 
on  the  other  j  it  is  the  immitigable  war  be 
tween  creative  Youth  and  reminiscent  Age. 
It  is  the  rebellious  demand  of  youth  for  the 
right  to  utter  himself  in  his  own  way,  with 
out  reference  to  past  models.  It  is  youth 


92  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

facing  life  and  the  future  over  against  age 
and  aristocracy,  clinging  to  the  inheritances 
of  the  past,  and  facing  certain  death. 

Every  great  group  of  dramatists  in  the 
past,  every  great  change  in  painting,  has 
met  the  same  opposition;  the  same  anath 
emas  have  been  winged,  the  same  warnings 
have  been  uttered  that  are  now  being  brought 
against  those  who  refuse  to  be  bound  by  the 
dramatic  models  of  the  past,  or  by  the  old 
masters  in  paint  and  oil.  The  veritist  ac 
cepts  as  a  matter  of  course  the  opposition 
he  meets. 

The  promise  of  change  in  the  drama  is 
becoming  fulfilment  in  the  rapid  rise  of  the 
local  drama,  which  is  following  exactly  in  the 
line  marked  out  by  the  local  novel ;  that  is 
to  say,  the  best  dramas  of  American  life  of 
the  last  ten  years  have  risen  from  the  loyal 
love  of  the  dramatist  for  certain  local  phases 
of  American  life ;  and  in  each  case  the  love 
of  subject  has  aided  the  dramatist  to  over 
ride,  in  some  degree,  barren  conventions, 
and  to  produce  lifelike  groups  of  characters. 

You  have  but  to  run  over  a  few  of  the 
names  to  perceive  this.  "  The  Old  Home- 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA.      93 

stead,"  "  Blue  Jeans,"  "  The  County  Fair," 
"  Alabama,"  "  Shore  Acres,"  "  In  Mizzoura," 
etc. 

It  must  here  again  be  repeated  that  the 
radical  critic  often  takes  interest  in  some  art 
output,  not  because  it  is  a  perfect  product, 
a  rounded  masterpiece  in  imitation  of  some 
model,  but  because  it  indicates  a  desire  for 
change  ;  because  it  prophesies  new  things. 

He  praises  "Shore  Acres,"  "Alabama," 
and  "In  Mizzoura "  because  they  are  sig 
nificant  of  change  from  melodrama  to  native 
character  comedy.  They  are  leaves,  show 
ing  the  set  of  the  current.  Where  the  actu 
ating  motive  of  the  dramatist  is  to  celebrate 
some  life  he  has  lived  and  loved,  the  tradi 
tions  of  the  drama  count  for  less ;  truth 
counts  for  more. 

Instances  of  this  are  to  be  seen  in  Mr. 
Herne's  "  Shore  Acres"  and  "In  Mizzoura," 
by  Augustus  Thomas.  Mr.  Herne's  "  Shore 
Acres  "  has  not  only  opened  a  new  dispen 
sation  in  New  England  drama,  but  by  its 
great  money  success  will  encourage  all  other 
dramatists  working  upon  local  themes.  It 
more  nearly  approaches  the  delineation  of 


94  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

New  England  life  than  any  other  play  to 
date.  It  rises  in  some  scenes  nearly  to  the 
level  of  Miss  Wilkins's  stories. 

Veritism  is  unquestionably  acting  upon 
the  drama  as  impressionism  has  already 
transformed  painting,  and  changed  the  cur 
rent  of  literature.  Veritism  discredits  plots 
and  formal  complications.  It  deals  with  life 
face  to  face,  and  swiftly  and  surely  and 
always  from  the  individual  artist's  stand 
point.  Characters  and  the  relation  of  groups 
of  characters  are  coming  to  have  more  value 
than  plot. 

When  Mr.  Howells  remarked  upon  this 
some  years  ago,  the  walls  of  Jericho  were 
apparently  shaken  down,  to  judge  from  the 
dust  and  noise  of  reverberating  explosion. 
Managers,  secure  in  possession  of  the 
"  Crimes  of  London  "  and  the  "  Gaslights  of 
Paris,"  turned  the  American  dramatist  out 
on  the  street,  through  the  medium  of  their 
suave  black  porters.  As  several  of  them 
plainly  said,  they  had  no  use  for  American 
dramatists.  But  to-day  every  marked  and 
continued  success  on  our  stage  is  an  Amer 
ican  drama  of  character,  treated  with  more 
or  less  of  sincerity  and  truth. 


THE  DRIFT  OF  THE  DRAMA.      95 

Everywhere  the  value  of  truth  increases, 
not  only  from  the  literary  side  of  the  stage, 
but  from  its  commercial  side.  Mr.  Harri- 
gan's  character  sketches  of  New  York  low 
life  will  be  supplemented  or  superseded  by 
character  studies  of  all  classes  of  New  York 
society.  Mr.  Brander  Matthews,  Mr.  Clyde 
Fitch,  and  Mr.  Richard  Harding  Davis  are 
likely  to  make  finished  and  valuable  con 
tributions  to  local  New  York  drama. 

Mr.  Joel  Harris  is  writing  a  drama  of  the 
South.  Mr.  Cable  is  reported  to  be  drama 
tizing  one  of  his  novels.  Miss  Wilkins  has 
made  a  most  excellent  beginning  with  "  Giles 
Corey."  She  will  do  better  when  she  handles 
a  modern  theme.  Without  question,  the 
local  novelists  and  the  local  dramatists  are 
to  be  co-workers  in  future,  and  the  whole 
outlook  is  very  fine  and  promising. 

Our  stage  is  soon  to  be  filled  with  the 
most  amusing  and  interesting,  because  truth 
ful  and  most  human  characters  ever  grouped 
on  any  one  national  stage.  Every  vitally 
interesting  theme  will  find  its  dramatists,  for 
there  is  no  set  law  for  the  form  and  theme 
of  the  drama. 


96  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

There  is  only  one  law  for  the  dramatist : 
he  must  interest  his  audience  from  start  to 
finish.  Interest  does  not  mean  merely  to 
amuse.  The  stage  cannot  long  remain  a 
mere  amusement.  It  must  interest  and  in 
struct  as  well,  or  it  will  pall  upon  the  public 
palate  like  a  diet  of  honey  or  vinegar.  Public 
taste  changes  with  great  rapidity,  making  con 
ditions  which  seem  stable  vanish  like  smoke. 
Less  than  five  years  ago  we  were  lost  in 
a  tumult  of  English  melodrama.  Every  the 
atre  echoed  with  the  voices  of  the  hero  and 
the  heavy  villain.  We  seem  likely  to  begin 
the  next  season  practically  without  the  aid 
of  cheap  English  drama,  and  more  and  bet 
ter  American  plays  are  promised  than  at  any 
other  time  in  the  history  of  our  drama. 

Taste    is    certainly    rising   to    meet    the 
dramatist,  who  was    on  the  higher    levels 
long    before  the   public   (or,   at    least, 
before  the  manager),  waiting  impa 
tiently  a  chance  to  put  his  best 
work     before    the    world. 
His    chance   seems 
coming    at 
last. 


VIII. 

4 

THE    INFLUENCE    OF    IBSEN. 


VIII  IN  this  transition  stage 

THE  INFLUENCE      the  W°rkS  °f   Henrik  ^ 
OF  IBSEN.  Sen   ^  COminS  to  have 

great  significance.  No 
doubt  there  is  a  good  deal  of  manufactured 
admiration  current,  but  there  is  enough  of 
genuine  enthusiasm  to  make  his  ideas  and 
works  an  issue.  His  significance  is  very 
great. 

He  not  only  represents  a  distinctive  phase 
of  dramatic  writing,  but  he  stands  (con 
sciously)  for  the  idea  of  progress  in  art. 
He  stands  for  actuality.  He  is  consistently 
and  wholly  progressive,  and  may  be  taken  to 
represent  the  whole  movement  in  dramatic 
art  commonly  called  realism,  but  which 
might  be  called  "  modernism." 

Realism,  in  its  true  sense,  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  Spanish  novelist  Valdes  uses  it, 
and  as  Mr.  Howells  uses  it,  does  not  mean 
the  reproduction  in  a  drama  of  tanks  and 
fire-engines,  or  real  burglars  blowing  open 


ioo  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

a  safe.  Neither  does  realism  in  the  novel 
mean  the  study  of  murderers,  insane  or  crim 
inal  classes.  Realism  in  its  broadest  mean 
ing  is  simply  the  idea  of  perceiving  and 
stating  the  truth  in  an  individual  way,  irre 
spective  of  past  models.  It  is  progress  in  art. 
It  does  not  despise  the  past,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  does  not  accept  any  man  or  age  as 
model. 

Ibsen,  the  great  Norwegian  poet  and  dra 
matist,  having  become  an  issue  in  the  drama, 
the  study  of  his  methods  is  likely  to  yield  good 
results, 

He  is  a  realist  first,  in  his  choice  of  theme. 
He  is  not  content  with  the  themes  common 
to  dramas.  He  deals  with  life,  and  modern 
life,  —  primarily  with  Norwegian  life,  but 
with  the  life  of  other  lands  secondarily,  for 
the  reason  that  his  theme  is  common  and 
modern,  and  his  aim  truth.  The  passions, 
situations  of  his  drama,  appeal  to  us  as  real, 
because  they  are  actualities  of  his  land  and 
time. 

He  is  modern,  in  that  his  domain  is  one 
upon  which  no  dramatist  of  the  Elizabe 
than  or  of  the  romantic  German  age  has  ever 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      101 

trenched.  Values  in  his  plays.are  readjusted 
to  suit  modern  life.  I Je  not*  Only  treats  of 
modern  themes,  but  gives  the  modern  man's 
comment  upon  them.  , 

Thus  his  choice  of  motive  in  itself  an 
nounces  a  widening  of  the  domain  of  the 
drama.  No  longer  restricted  to  the  cardinal 
passions,  —  love,  fear,  hate,  jealousy,  or  re 
venge,  —  all  emotions,  and  especially  all  new, 
distinctively  modern  and  intellectual  emo 
tions,  are  to  be  used  as  basis  for  the  coming 
drama. 

Life  is  to  be  depicted,  not  love-life.  Sexual 
attractions  and  perplexities  do  not  form  life, 
but  only  part  of  life.  Even  the  old  passions 
are  taking  new  forms.  Ambition  concerns 
itself  with  new  objects,  and  hate  has  new 
expressions.  Life  is  in  continual  process  of 
change,  and  in  conformity  to  these  social 
and  individual  changes  the  drama  always  has 
changed  and  must  ever  change. 

Ibsen's  work  not  only  predicts  the  im 
pending  change ;  it  enforces  it.  His  themes 
could  not  have  been  used  by  any  other  age ; 
in  no  past  age  would  they  have  been  under- 
stood,  —  nor  are  they  now,  for  a  vast  and 
electric  prophecy  runs  through  them  all. 


102  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

.It  is  an  advanced  condition  of  mind,  an 
exceptional  mental  development  that  enables 
Ibsen  to  £nd  poetry  and  significance  in  the 
realities  of  -modern  Hie.  He  was  born  a 
reformer.  His  plays  are  not  merely  radical 
in  theory,  they  are  sections  of  life,  —  seg 
ments,  not  circles;  for  nothing  begins  or 
ends  in  this  world.  All  is  ebb  and  flow. 
It  is  only  in  the  romance  that  things  are 
finished,  rounded  out,  and  smoothed  down. 

His  realities  are,  moreover,  common  reali 
ties.  Take  "  The  Enemy  of  Society,"  for 
example,  perhaps  the  most  radical  in  form 
and  subject  (dramatically)  of  all  his  plays. 
See  how  small  a  part  the  passion  of  love  or 
jealousy  plays  in  it !  See  how  great  a  part 
pure  intellect  plays ! 

The  theme  is  sociological.  The  treatment 
so  magnificently  direct  and  masterly,  the 
characterization  so  honest,  we  are  made  to 
feel  very  near  these  townsmen  whose  secret 
feelings  and  thoughts  are  being  laid  bare  to 
us.  Note  what  wide  representative  reach 
has  been  attained  by  being  faithful  to  actual 
conditions.  It  might  all  have  happened  at 
Bar  Haven  or  at  Boomtown,  Nebraska. 
The  same  lying,  booming,  robbing  goes  on 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      103 

where  the  social  conditions  are  similar,  the 
same  deceits  and  corruptions ;  being  true  to 
the  Norwegian  village,  he  attains  the  widest 
interest. 

I  repeat,  he  is  a  realist  in  his  choice  of 
subject,  because  he  treats  of  ideas,  emotions, 
and  situations  new  to  the  drama  but  common 
to  life,  and  deals  with  them  all  in  a  new  way. 
We  are  done  with  machinery,  fustian,  and 
clap-trap  as  we  enter  his  dramatic  world. 
Worn-out  themes  have  no  place  in  the  six 
or  seven  social  dramas  he  has  given  us. 

How  true  and  unconventional  his  style. 
We  hardly  realize  how  false  and  stilted  cur 
rent  stage-conversation  is,  till  we  hear  the 
real  word  spoken  there.  His  words  come 
to  us  at  times  like  thrust  of  naked  fists. 
They  shake  the  hearer  with  their  weight  of 
real  passion.  In  one  sense  this  speech  is  as- 
toundingly  direct,  and  then  again  it  is  subtly 
indirect  —  as  in  life.  Observe  how  his  love- 
making  proceeds.  How  chary  of  words. 
Only  a  hint  here  and  there.  Its  expression 
is  left  mainly  to  the  tone  of  the  voice,  or  put 
into  the  vibrant  undertone  when  talking  of 
the  weather,  or  it  is  dramatized  in  the  face. 


104  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

For  example,  see  Hovstadt  with  Petra  in 
"  The  Enemy  of  Society."  As  in  life,  where 
the  word  "  love  "  means  most  it  is  used  char 
ily  ;  especially  is  this  true  among  the  middle 
classes.  On  the  stage,  however,  it  is  so 
common  as  to  lose  all  significance  and 
sacredness. 

Observe  also  that  in  the  superb  reality  of 
his  plays  the  soliloquy  is  lost,  that  hoary 
monstrosity;  that  cheap  way  of  explain 
ing  to  the  audience  what  the  dramatist  had 
not  the  skill  to  suggest ;  that  ancient  de 
vice,  by  which  the  hero  tells  the  gallery  that 
his  heart  is  breaking,  while  the  villain  ex 
plains  the  plot  and  unfolds  his  wickedness  ! 
The  soliloquy,  the  stronghold  of  the  con 
ventional  drama,  is  gone  when  we  enter  the 
theatre  where  Ibsen's  later  plays  are  being 
performed. 

Verity  demands,  also,  simplicity  of  plan. 
Observe  this  in  "  The  Doll-Home,"  in 
"  Ghosts,"  in  "  Rosmersholm."  No  compli 
cations,  no  external  intricacies,  hardly  any 
thing  approaching  a  plot,  the  interest  de 
pending  entirely  upon  the  characterization 
and  the  thought.  The  pursuit  and  not  the 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      105 

end,  has  become  (as  in  the  novel)  the  leading 
motive. 

The  plan  springs  from  the  characters,  and 
unrolls  mysteriously,  with  all  the  unforeseen 
changes  of  life  itself.  Nothing  can  be  fore 
told  any  more  than  in  a  novel  of  life.  At  his 
best  he  takes  a  common  man  or  a  represen 
tative  man  and  follows  him  through  a  moral 
or  mental  change,  with  all  his  logical  con 
nections,  and  leaves  him  as  abruptly  as  he 
began. 

There  are  no  heroines,  villains,  and  heroes 
in  these  uncompromising  dramas.  Their  race 
is  run.  The  accommodating  gentleman  who 
keeps  things  stirred  up  through  four  acts  in 
order  that  the  hero  may  display  himself,  is 
out  of  business  in  this  modern  drama.  Krog- 
stadt  is  the  nearest  approach  to  this  facto 
tum,  the  villain,  and  he  is  only  a  man  gone 
wrong,  and  persecuting,  not  for  love  of  it,  but 
for  love  of  his  children,  —  persecution  based 
on  the  affection  of  a  father  and  not  on  lust 
and  greed. 

This  brings  me  to  one  of  the  greatest  dis 
tinctions  of  all,  and  that  is  the  dramatist's 
treatment  of  motives.  One  hardly  dares 


io6  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

say  how  much  this  may  come  to  mean  to 
the  realist.  Nothing  shows  the  great  Nor 
wegian's  power  of  delineation  and  his  love 
for  verity  and  for  justice  more  clearly  than 
his  treatment  of  the  moving  forces  of  his 
characters.  He  sees  them  completely  in 
form  and  dress,  speech  and  motive.  They 
are  men  and  women. 

As  one  reads  "  Pillars  of  Society,"  for 
example,  following  the  study  of  Bernick,  it 
seems  at  first  like  a  merciless  satire,  —  but 
wait  and  see  !  The  drama  mounts  at  length 
into  the  region  of  motives.  It  tells  that  the 
hypocrite  Bernick  is  himself  a  product  of 
conditions.  He  has  his  side  of  the  story,  and 
the  power  to  state  it  well-nigh  irresistibly. 
"  Perhaps  you  think  I  acted  from  selfish 
motives,"  Bernick  pleads.  "  If  I  had  stood 
alone,  then,  I  would  have  begun  the  world 
again,  cheerfully  and  bravely.  But  you  don't 
understand  how  the  head  of  a  great  house 
becomes  a  living  part  of  the  business  he 
inherits,  with  its  enormous  responsibility. 
Do  you  know  that  the  weal  or  woe  of 
thousands  depends  upon  him  ?  " 

LONA.  —  It  is  for   the   sake  of  the  com- 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      107 

munity  then,  that  for  these  fifteen  years  you 
have  stood  upon  a  lie  ? 

BERNICK.  —  A  lie? 

LONA.  —  I  call  it  the  lie,  —  the  threefold 
lie. 

BERNICK. — Would  you  have  me  sacri 
fice  my  domestic  happiness  and  my  position 
in  society  ? 

LONA.  —  What  right  have  you  to  stand 
where  you  are  standing  ? 

BERNICK.  —  I  Ve  gained  more  and  more 
right  every  day  for  fifteen  years,  —  by  all 
I  've  labored  for,  by  my  whole  life,  by  all 
I  've  won. 

We  begin  to  ponder;  we  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  would  have  done  better  had  we 
been  in  his  place. 

Thus  each  character  has,  in  a  sense,  his 
justification.  We  see  things  from  their  stand 
point.  The  fluent  and  all-embracing  sym 
pathy  of  the  dramatist  has  gone  around  these 
men  and  women.  Malformed  and  twisted 
as  they  are,  they  have  always  a  dramatic 
justification  for  their  action. 

We  come  now  to  his  dramatic  situations, 
where  again  his  faithfulness  to  fact  is  shown. 


io8  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

In  life,  how  slight  a  thing  leads  to  a  tragedy  ! 
A  misapprehension,  a  feeling  of  foolish  pride, 
a  jest,  a  word  or  two  spoken  hastily,  —  these 
are  the  causes  of  many  a  life-long  separation, 
many  a  tragic  sorrow.  Considered  from  the 
stage,  how  slight  is  the  barrier  between  Nora 
and  Thorvald  in  "The  Doll-Home,"  but 
how  insuperable  considered  from  the  stand 
point  of  life. 

We  have  a  difference  arising  between 
the  brothers  Stockman  in  "  The  Enemy  of 
Society,"  —  a  difference  based  upon  deep 
mental  disagreements,  upon  fundamental 
facts,  and  which  will  separate  them  forever. 

There  is  something  recognizably  immiti 
gable  in  these  terrible  moods.  They  shake 
us,  for  we  recognize  our  own  liability  to  such 
disasters ;  but  in  the  melodrama  and  the 
romantic  play,  no  matter  what  happens,  we 
remain  tranquil.  Though  the  heroine  be 
burned  at  the  stake,  and  the  hero  thrice  set 
upon,  we  know  that  through  flame  and  bolt, 
and  wastes  of  sea,  in  spite  of  hate  and  pur 
chased  justice,  they  will  come  forth  vindi 
cated  and  unharmed  in  the  joyous  fifth  act. 
We  know  this,  and  feel  about  for  our  over 
shoes. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      109 

But  in  the  plays  of  Ibsen  we  do  not  find 
ourselves  able  to  predict  what  changes  may 
come,  for  the  reason  that  the  action  springs 
from  and  depends  upon  the  characters.  The 
full  meaning  of  this  may  not  appear  at  first 
sight.  To  have  the  action  spring  from  the 
characters  is  to  destroy  the  traditional  plot 
It  means  to  have  individuals,  not  situations. 
It  means  that  this  is  the  farthest  present  re 
move  from  the  immitigable  doom  in  ^-Eschy- 
lus,  and  the  fixed  complications  of  Shake 
spearian  comedy.  It  destroys  romantic  plots 
and  under-plots. 

On  the  same  general  principle  of  verity 
first  and  effect  afterwards,  is  Ibsen's  superb 
treatment  of  what  are  called  irrelevant  char 
acters,  irrelevant  incident.  He  selects  cer 
tain  characters  for  delineation,  and  then  uses 
such  others  as  naturally  come  into  the  range 
of  his  drama;  and  as  the  action  passes  on 
and  leaves  them  behind,  they  do  not  reappear. 
They  served  their  purpose  and  are  lost  to 
view. 

The  dramatist  takes  two  or  three  life-lines, 
which  he  holds  in  his  hands,  and,  like  the 
novelist,  traces  them  through  the  maze  of  in- 


i io  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

cident.  For  example,  in  "  The  Doll-Home  " 
there  are  two  central  figures ;  around  them 
are  changing  groups  of  men  and  women. 
The  hearer  or  reader  feels  that  these  people 
are  a  part  of  life,  that  other  men  and  women 
meet  and  influence  them  for  a  time  and  pass 
out  of  their  lives.  Only  the  few  are  in  any 
way  accounted  for  at  the  end. 

This  is  in  accordance  with  the  ideas  put 
by  Olive  Schreiner  into  that  strange  and 
powerful  preface  to  "  An  African  Farm  " : 

"  Human  life  may  be  painted  according  to  two 
methods.  There  is  the  stage  method.  Accord 
ing  to  that,  each  character  is  duly  marshalled  at 
first  and  ticketed.  We  know  with  an  immutable 
certainty  that  at  the  right  crises  each  will  reap 
pear,  act  his  part,  and  when  the  curtain  falls  all 
will  stand  before  it  bowing.  There  is  a  sense  of 
satisfaction  in  this  and  completeness.  But  there 
is  another  method,  the  method  of  the  life  we 
lead.  Here  nothing  can  be  prophesied.  There 
is  a  strange  coming  and  going  of  feet.  Men 
appear,  act,  and  react  upon  each  other  and  pass 
away.  When  the  crisis  comes,  the  man  who 
would  fit  it  does  not  appear.  When  the  curtain 
falls,  no  one  is  ready.  .  .  .  Life  may  be  painted 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      in 

according  to  either  method,  but  the  methods 
are  different.  The  canons  of  criticism  that  bear 
upon  the  one,  cut  cruelly  across  the  other." 

Here  is  the  creed,  if  creed  it  may  be  called, 
of  the  absolute  veritistor  realist.  Ibsen  may 
be  criticised,  but  only  with  reference  to  this 
principle  of  verity.  If  there  is  irrelevant 
incident  in  life,  then  it  does  not  belong  to 
the  drama.  There  are  no  traditional  cri- 
terions  by  which  to  judge  a  man  whose  aim 
is,  not  to  conform  to  traditions,  but  to  ignore 
them. 

See  the  power  of  an  "  irrelevant  character  " 
in  Dr.  Rank !  Apparently  unrelated,  yet 
what  power  lies  in  his  coming  and  going. 
Nothing  in  the  play  seemed  to  me  more  irre 
sistibly  courageous  and  true  than  the  hand 
ling  of  that  modern  man. 

But  was  he  irrelevant  ?  Is  he  not  subtly 
related?  Does  he  not  throw  into  relief  the 
life,  the  abounding  animality,  of  Thorvald 
and  the  unthinking  happiness  of  Nora  ?  He 
seems  to  me  deeply  significant  as  a  foil,  such 
as  we  see  in  daily  life,  when  the  dead  lie 
silently  in  the  dim  room, — 


ii2  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

"  And  the  summer  morning  is  cool  and  sweet, 
And  we  hear  the  live  folk  laugh  in  the  street." 

Every  character  we  note  closely  stands  in 
a  subtle  relation  to  us  in  real  life,  and  every 
character  which  comes  naturally  into  the 
drama  of  verities  has  significance.  The 
traditional  law  that  it  must  "  help  the  story 
on  "  has  no  significance  where  the  story  is 
lost  sight  of  in  the  development  of  character, 
where  the  pursuit  and  not  the  end  is  the  first 
consideration,  as  with  the  realist. 

On  the  score  of  pure  modernness,  original 
ity,  and  truth,  both  in  subject  and  method, 
I  am  inclined  to  put  "  The  Enemy  of  Soci 
ety  "  at  the  head  of  the  dramas  I  have  read 
of  the  great  Norwegian.  It  is  the  most  mod 
ern,  the  most  unconventional,  the  most  radi 
cal,  and,  to  me,  one  of  the  most  powerful 
dramas  ever  written.  Love  plays  in  it  but 
the  small  part  it  should;  other  ideas  and 
emotions  absorb  us.  Like  a  section  of  life, 
it  has  no  beginning  and  no  end.  It  has  no 
machinery,  and  nothing  is  forced.  It  is  as 
modern  as  the  telephone. 

"  Yes,  and  as  lacking  in  beauty,"  says 
some  one.  "To  you?  I  reply;  "to  me  it 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      113 

has  something  that  is  higher  than  beauty ; 
it  has  truth." 

Using  the  same  criterion,  life,  we  see  that 
"  The  Pillars  of  Society  "  is  not  quite  so  mod 
ern.  It  has  a  little  of  the  machinery  of  the 
stage  left.  Things  happen  here  and  there, 
but  it  is  powerfully  unconventional,  for  all 
that.  It  is  filled  with  superb  living  figures, 
and  the  treatment  of  Bernick  is  beyond 
praise.  A  powerful  satire,  it  does  not  fail 
of  doing  justice  to  each  figure. 

Finally,  Ibsen's  treatment  of  woman  stamps 
his  radical  departure  from  old  standards  more 
clearly,  perhaps,  than  any  other  point.  The 
feudalistic  woman  has  been  for  centuries 
either  a  sovereign  or  a  servant,  a  heroine  or 
a  drudge.  In  the  ordinary  drama  she  is  long- 
suffering,  patient,  and  beautiful,  or  is  pretty 
and  provokes  laughter. 

Predominantly,  from  the  days  of  Edmund 
Spenser  to  the  last  issue  of  the  dime  novel, 
the  heroine  has  been  characterless,  colorless, 
and  passive.  In  the  romantic  drama  she 
has  languished  in  dungeons,  been  the  pas 
sive  subject  of  duels  and  abductions,  cal 
umny,  and  reproach.  She  has  been  deceived, 
8 


ii4  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

driven  from  home,  cheated  of  her  inheritance, 
schemed  for  by  villains,  and  rescued  by  he 
roes,  while  gazing  with  big  round  eyes  at 
the  world  which  was  a  chaos  of  crime  and 
wickedness.  Her  bodily  allurements  have 
been  harped  upon  and  exaggerated  till  she 
has  imagined  the  whole  world  eager  to  pos 
sess  her,  warring  only  for  her.  It  is  impos 
sible  to  estimate  the  harm  this  sort  of  lying 
has  produced. 

To  pass  from  such  an  atmosphere  to  that 
of  Ibsen's  plays  is  like  going  from  a  ques 
tionable  ballroom,  filled  with  painted  and 
simpering  faces,  out  into  the  crisp  bracing 
air  of  the  street,  filled  with  healthy  and  vigo 
rous  men  and  women  ;  like  going  into  a  home 
where  man  and  wife,  equal  in  fact  as  in  law, 
are  discussing  the  questions  of  the  day  with 
a  party  of  valued  friends.  And  yet  in  the 
feudalistic  picture  there  was  once  large  ele 
ment  of  truth.  It  is  no  longer  true ;  it  should 
be  discarded.  A  new  woman  has  appeared 
in  life. 

Dramatically,  Ibsen's  women  are  centres 
of  action;  not  passive  dramatic  "bones  of 
contention,"  but  active  agents  in  their  turn. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      115 

Indeed,  they  take  the  play  in  their  own  hands 
at  times.  They  re-act  upon  men,  they  rise 
above  men  at  times  in  the  perception  of  jus 
tice,  of  absolute  ethics ;  they  are  out  in  the 
world,  the  men's  world.  They  may  not  un 
derstand  it  very  well,  but  they  are  at  least  in 
it,  and  having  their  opinion  upon  things,  and 
voicing  their  emotions.  They  are  out  of  the 
unhealthy  air  of  the  feudalistic  romance,  so 
much  is  certain,  so  much  is  gain.  They  are 
grappling,  not  merely  with  affairs,  but  with 
social  problems. 

My  criticism  of  Ibsen  in  this  particular  is 
again  on  the  score  of  reality.  In  his  rebound 
from  the  false  and  degrading  pictures  of 
women  as  having  but  one  life,  love-life,  he 
has,  in  my  estimation,  used  too  large  a  pro 
portion  of  remarkable  women  to  be  perfectly 
true  to  his  time  and  country ;  and  in  order 
to  emphasize  the  growing  power  and  expand 
ing  individuality  of  the  modern  woman,  he 
has  once  or  twice  included  the  improbable,  if 
not  the  impossible,  in  the  action  of  his  women. 

There  is  also  a  strain  of  morbid  psychol 
ogy  in  many  of  his  characters  which  I  do 
not  value.  I  prefer  his  studies  of  more  com- 


ii6  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

mon  phases  of  modern  intellectual  life.  Yet 
the  whole  outcome  of  even  these  studies  of 
morbid  conditions  is  helpful,  fine,  and  strong, 
and  he  does  not  lose  his  grasp  on  surround 
ing  facts,  when  studying  these  special  cases. 

It  is  a  trite  saying  that  the  sense  of  humor 
is  a  "  saving  grace."  This  element  is  not 
lacking  in  Ibsen,  but  it  is  not  so  well  devel 
oped  as  to  give  that  peculiar  touch  of  saving 
grace.  There  is  a  plenty  of  grim  humor,  but 
there  is  little  of  kindly  humor  in  his  plays. 
He  is  kept  from  being  extravagant  not  by  the 
sense  of  the  ridiculous  so  much  as  by  sheer 
intellect  and  deep  vibrant  sympathy.  The 
humor  that  is  everywhere  a  corrective  in  the 
fervid  sympathy  and  burning  social  discon 
tent  of  Mr.  Howells's  later  novels  is  not 
found  in  Ibsen  ;  and,  lacking  it,  "  The  Doll- 
Home  "  lacks  the  fine  poise  a  humorous  sense 
of  human  frailties  gives  to  a  serious  work  of 
fiction. 

One  closes  a  reading  of  these  astounding 
dramas  with  the  consciousness  that  some 
thing  electric  has  passed  by.  They  stand  so 
sheer  above  most  of  the  dramas  of  the  age 
that  it  is  no  wonder  the  critics  are  amazed 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  IBSEN.      117 

and  enraged.  The  person  who  comes  to  like 
these  dramas  and  their  methods  is  likely  to 
find  his  taste  for  conventional  heroics  dis 
turbed,  if  not  destroyed.  The  romantic  ab 
surdities  of  the  day  cannot  flourish  long  in 
the  same  atmosphere.  Ibsen  is  a  great  her 
ald,  his  dramas  lead  to  the  future. 

Observe,  I  do  not  claim  for  him  superhu 
man  merit.  These  plays  are  not  the  farther 
wall.  They  are  not  yet  on  a  plane  with  the 
great  novels  of  the  day.  Their  purpose  is 
too  obvious,  but  they  are  a  superb  advance. 
Ibsen  already  sees  the  beauty  and  signifi 
cance  of  the  common  life  of  the  day.  He 
begins  to  recognize  no  such  thing  as  "  com 
monplace."  He  exemplifies  the  magnificent 
sayings  of  Tolstoy,  Valdes,  and  Whitman,  all 
using  almost  the  same  words. 

"In  nature  there  is  nothing  either  great 
or  small,  all  is  equal.  All  is  equally  great, 
equally  just,  equally  beautiful.  To  talk  of 
the  trifles  of  life  is  not  posssible  to  him  who 
has  meditated  on  the  great  problem  of  exist 
ence.  The  trifle  does  not  exist  absolutely, 
only  as  a  relative  term.  That  which  is  a 
trifle  to  some  is  a  great  fact  to  others.  In 


ii8  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

all  that  is  particular  we  may  be  shown  the 
general,  in  all  that  is  finite  the  infinite.  Art 
is  charged  with  its  revelation." 

Realism  is  not  a  theory,  it  is  a  condition 
of  mind,  of  sensibility.  The  realist  has  only 
one  law,  to  be  true  to  himself  ;  only  one  crite 
rion,  life.  He  must  love  genuinely  what  he 
depicts,  and  be  true.  Anything  that  he  loves, 
the  artist  will  make  important  to  others  as  to 
himself.  He  must  not  be  discouraged  if  the 
general  public  does  not  love  the  same  fact  as 
himself.  He  will  find  sympathizers  at  last. 

If  there  is  one  great  idea  dominant  in  the 
present  age,  it  is  this :  "  Art  is  not  the  repro 
duction  of  art ;  each  epoch  must  have  its  own 
./  art."  Each  age  writes,  paints,  sings  of  its 
own  time  and  for  its  time.  All  genuine  mod 
ern  art  must  conform  to  this  general  and  in 
exorable  law. 

Ibsen  has  helped  us  in  our  war  against 
conventionalisms,  but  he  must  not  domi 
nate    us.      His    plays   are  not  to 
be   models.     Our  drama  will 
be    more    human,    more 
wholesome,  and  more 
humorou  s. 


IX. 


IMPRESSIONISM. 


ix  EVERY    competent 

observer    who    passed 

IMPRESSIONISM. 

through  the  art  palace 
at  the  Exposition  was  probably  made  aware 
of  the  immense  growth  of  impressionistic 
or  open-air  painting.  If  the  Exposition  had 
been  held  five  years  ago,  scarcely  a  trace  of 
the  blue-shadow  idea  would  have  been  seen 
outside  the  work  of  Claude  Monet,  Pisarro, 
and  a  few  others  of  the  French  and  Spanish 
groups. 

To-day,  as  seen  in  this  wonderful  collection, 
impressionism  as  a  principle  has  affected  the 
younger  men  of  Russia,  Norway,  Sweden, 
Denmark,  and  America  as  well  as  the  plein 
air  school  of  Giverney.  Its  presence  is  put 
in  evidence  to  the  ordinary  observer  in  the 
prevalence  of  blue  or  purple  shadows,  and 
by  the  abundance  of  dazzling  sun-light 
effects. 

This  growth  of  an  idea  in  painting  must 
not  be  confounded  with  a  mere  vogue.  It 


122  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

is  evolutionary,  if  not  destructive,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  old-school  painters,  at  least.  To  the 
younger  men  it  assumes  almost  as  much 
importance  as  the  law  of  gravity.  With 
them  it  is  the  true  law  of  light  and  shade. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  consider,  quite 
apart  from  technical  terms,  the  principles 
upon  which  this  startling  departure  from  the 
conventional  manner  is  based. 

The  fundamental  idea  of  the  impression 
ists,  as  I  understand /it,  is  that  a  picture 
should  be  a  unified  impression.  It  should 
not  be  a  mosaic,  but  a  complete  and  of  course 
momentary  concept  of  the  sense  of  sight. 
It  should  not  deal  with  the  concepts  of  other 
senses  (as  touch),  nor  with  judgments ;  it 
should  be  the  stayed  and  reproduced  effect 
of  a  single  section  of  the  world  of  color  upon 
the  eye.  It  should  not  be  a  number  of 
pictures  enclosed  in  one  frame,  but  a  single 
idea  impossible  of  subdivision  without  loss. 

They  therefore  strive  to  represent  in  color 
an  instantaneous  effect  of  light  and  shade 
as  presented  by  nature,  and  they  work  in  the 
open  air  necessarily.  They  are  concerned 
with  atmosphere  always.  They  know  that 


IMPRESSIONISM.  123 

the  landscape  is  never  twice  alike.  Every 
degree  of  the  progress  of  the  sun  makes  a  new 
picture.  They  follow  the  most  splendid  and 
alluring  phases  of  nature,  putting  forth 
almost  superhuman  effort  to  catch  impres 
sions  of  delight  under  which  they  quiver. 

They  select  some  moment,  some  centre  of 
interest, —  generally  of  the  simplest  character. 
This  central  object  they  work  out  with  great 
care,  but  all  else  fades  away  into  subordinate 
blur  of  color,  precisely  as  in  life.  We  look 
at  a  sheep,  for  example,  feeding  under  a 
tree.  We  see  the  sheep  with  great  clearness, 
and  the  tree  and  the  stump,  but  the  fence 
and  hill  outside  the  primary  circle  of  vision 
are  only  obscurely  perceived.  The  meadow 
beyond  is  a  mere  blur  of  yellow-green.  This 
is  the  natural  arrangement.  If  we  look  at 
the  fence  or  the  meadow,  another  picture  is 
born. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  these  men  are 
veritists  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word. 
They  are  referring  constantly  to  nature.  If 
you  look  carefully  at  the  Dutch  painters  and 
the  English  painters  of  related  thought,  you 
will  find  them  working  out  each  part  of  the 


124  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

picture  with  almost  the  same  clearness. 
Their  canvases  are  not  single  pictures,  they 
are  mosaics  of  pictures,  packed  into  one 
frame.  Values  are  almost  equal  everywhere. 

This  idea  of  impressionism  makes  much  of 
the  relation  and  interplay  of  light  and  shade, 
—  not  in  black  and  white,  but  in  color.  Im 
pressionists  are,  above  all,  colorists.  They 
cannot  sacrifice  color  for  multiple  lines. 
They  do  not  paint  leaves,  they  paint  masses 
of  color ;  they  paint  the  effect  of  leaves  upon 
the  eye. 

They  teach  that  the  retina  perceives  only 
plane  surfaces.  The  eye  takes  note,  in  its 
primary  impressions,  of  masses  rather  than 
lines.  This  idea  affects  the  painting  of 
groups ;  and  the  most  advanced  painter 
never  loses  the  unity  of  light  effects,  no 
matter  how  tempting  a  subject  may  be,  nor 
how  complex. 

This  may  be  illustrated  by  reference  to  a 
picture  exhibited  in  the  Norwegian  section,  — 
"  The  First  Communion."  The  scene  is  the 
sitting  or  dining  room  of  a  well-to-do  family. 
It  is  lighted  by  a  single  hanging-lamp.  The 
family  stand  in  a  semi-circle  against  the  wall. 


IMPRESSIONISM.  125 

The  minister  stands  silhouetted  against  the 
light  of  the  lamp.  He  is  the  principal  figure 
of  the  group,  and  yet,  because  truth  demanded 
his  position  there,  he  remains  a  shadow,  — 
but  a  luminous  shadow,  kindly,  dignified,  and 
authoritative. 

The  lamp  casts  blue-green  and  orange 
streaks  and  blurs  of  color  across  the  table, 
and  over  the  white  shirts  and  collars.  Some 
of  the  faces  are  vague  masses  of  light,  won 
derfully  full  of  character.  Few  faces  are 
outlined  definitely.  The  whole  is  simply  a 
splendid  and  solemn  impression,  as  if  in 
passing  by  in  the  darkness  one  had  caught, 
through  an  open  door,  a  glance  at  a  hushed 
and  reverential  communion  ceremony.  It  is 
like  Dagnan-Bouveret  with  better  color. 

Without  pointing  out,  as  one  might,  con 
spicuous  examples  of  the  literal  delineation 
of  groups  (in  the  American  section  as  well 
as  elsewhere),  I  would  call  attention  to  the 
fact  that  this  is  the  modern  picture.  It  is 
also  the  dramatic  picture,  because  it  takes  up 
and  relates  at  a  stroke  the  impression  of  a 
dramatic  moment.  The  mosaic  is  the  un 
true  picture  because  the  eye  never  sees  all 


126  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

faces  with  equal  clearness,  especially  at  a 
moment  of  dramatic  interest. 

This  singleness  of  impression  destroys,  of 
course,  all  idea  of  "  cooked  up  "  pictures,  as 
the  artists  say.  There  are,  moreover,  no 
ornate  or  balanced  effects.  The  painter  takes 
a  swift  glance  at  a  hill-side,  whose  sky-line 
cuts  the  picture  diagonally,  perhaps.  It  has 
a  wind-blown  tuft  of  trees  upon  it,  possibly. 
A  brook  comes  into  the  foreground  casually. 
Or  he  takes  for  subject  a  hay-stack  in  a 
field,  painting  it  for  the  variant  effects  of 
sun-light.  He  finds  his  heart's-full  of  beauty 
and  mystery  in  a  bit  of  a  meadow  with  a  row 
of  willows. 

He  takes  intimate  views  of  nature ;  but  if 
he  painted  the  heart  of  the  Andes,  he  would 
do  it,  not  as  the  civil  engineer  sees  it,  but  as 
he  himself  sees  it  and  loves  it. 

The  second  principle,  and  the  one  most 
likely  to  be  perceived  by  the  casual  observer, 
is  the  use  of  "raw"  colors.  The  impres 
sionist  does  not  believe  nature  needs  toning 
or  harmonizing.  Her  colors,  he  finds,  are 
primary,  and  are  laid  on  in  juxtaposition. 
Therefore  the  impressionist  does  not  mix 


IMPRESSIONISM.  127 

his  paints  upon  his  palette.  He  paints  with 
nature's  colors,  —  red,  blue,  and  yellow ;  and 
he  places  them  fearlessly  on  the  canvas  side 
by  side,  leaving  the  eye  to  mix  them,  as  in 
nature. 

For  example,  the  late  Dennis  M.  Bunker, 
in  painting  a  meadow  stream,  did  not  hesitate 
to  paint  the  water  blue  as  the  sky,  nor  to 
paint  the  red  band  of  rust-like  silt  on  the 
margin  of  the  stream  in  close  juxtaposition 
to  the  vivid  green  of  the  meadow  grass.  This 
picture,  beside  a  Dutch  or  English  conven 
tional  landscape,  was  as  radically  different,  as 
radiantly  beautiful,  as  a  sunlit  day  in  New 
England  June  put  over  against  a  dull  day 
on  the  low-lands  of  the  North  Sea;  and 
this  is  right.  The  painter  was  not  account 
able  to  the  Dutch  or  English  or  French 
painters  of  any  time  or  place ;  he  was 
accountable  only  to  nature  and  to  his  own 
sense. 

This  placing  of  red,  blue,  and  yellow  side 
by  side  gives  a  crispness  and  brilliancy,  and 
a  peculiar  vibratory  quality  to  sky  and  earth 
which  is  unknown  to  the  old  method.  And 
if  the  observer  will  forget  conventions  and 


128  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

will  refer  the  canvas  back  to  nature  instead, 
he  will  find  this  to  be  the  true  concept. 

I  once  asked  a  keen  lover  of  nature  who 
knew  nothing  about  painting,  to  visit  a  gal 
lery  with  me  and  see  some  impressionistic 
works  which  had  shocked  the  city.  I  asked 
him  to  stand  before  these  pictures  and  tell 
me  just  what  he  thought  of  them. 

He  looked  long  and  earnestly,  and  then 
turned  with  an  enthusiastic  light  in  his  eyes, 
"  That  is  June  grass  under  the  sunlight." 

His  eyes  had  not  been  educated  to  despise 
the  vigor  and  splendor  of  nature.  He  cared 
nothing  for  Corot  or  Constable  or  Turner.  I 
believe  that  the  unspoiled  perception  of  a 
lover  of  untempered  nature  will  find  in  the 
pictures  of  the  best  impressionists  the  quality 
he  calls  "  natural." 

To  most  eyes  the  sign-manual  of  the  im 
pressionist  is  the  blue  shadow.  And  it  must 
be  admitted  that  too  many  impressionists 
have  painted  as  if  the  blue  shadow  were 
the  only  distinguishing  sign  of  the  difference 
between  the  new  and  the  old.  The  gallery- 
trotter,  with  eyes  filled  with  dead  and  buried 
symbolisms  of  nature,  comes  upon  Bunker's 


IMPRESSIONISM.  1 29 

meadows,  or  Binding's  mountain-tops,  or  Lar 
son's  sunsets,  and  exclaims,  "Oh,  see  those 
dreadful  pictures !  Where  did  they  get  such 
colors." 

To  see  these  colors  is  a  development.  In 
my  own  case,  I  may  confess,  I  got  my  first 
idea  of  colored  shadows  from  reading  one  of 
Herbert  Spencer's  essays  ten  years  ago.  I 
then  came  to  see  blue  and  grape-color  in  the 
shadows  on  the  snow.  By  turning  my  head 
top-side  down,  I  came  to  see  that  shadows 
falling  upon  yellow  sand  were  violet,  and 
the  shadows  of  vivid  sunlight  falling  on  the 
white  of  a  macadamized  street  were  blue, 
like  the  shadows  on  snows. 

Being  so  instructed,  I  came  to  catch 
through  the  corners  of  my  eyes  sudden 
glimpses  of  a  radiant  world  which  vanished 
as  magically  as  it  came.  On  my  horse  I 
caught  glimpses  of  this  marvellous  land  of 
color  as  I  galloped  across  some  bridge.  In 
this  world  stone-walls  were  no  longer  cold 
gray,  they  were  warm  purple,  deepening  as 
the  sun  westered.  And  so  the  landscape  grew 
radiant  year  by  year,  until  at  last  no  painter's 
impression  surpassed  my  world  in  beauty. 
9 


130  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

As  I  write  this,  I  have  just  come  in  from 
a  bee-hunt  over  Wisconsin  hills,  amid  splen 
dors  which  would  make  Monet  seem  low- 
keyed.  Only  Enneking  and  some  few  others 
of  the  American  artists,  and  some  of  the 
Norwegians  have  touched  the  degree  of 
brilliancy  and  sparkle  of  color  which  was  in 
the  world  to-day.  Amid  bright  orange  foli 
age,  the  trunks  of  beeches  glowed  with  steel- 
blue  shadows  on  their  eastern  side.  Sumach 
flamed  with  marvellous  brilliancy  among 
deep  cool  green  grasses  and  low  plants 
untouched  by  frost.  Everywhere  amid  the 
red  and  orange  and  crimson  were  lilac  and 
steel-blue  shadows,  giving  depth  and  vigor 
and  buoyancy  which  Corot  never  saw  (or 
never  painted),  —  a  world  which  Inness  does 
not  represent.  Enneking  comes  nearer,  but 
even  he  tones  unconsciously  the  sparkle  of 
these  colors. 

Going  from  this  world  of  frank  color  to 
the  timid  apologies  and  harmonies  of  the  old- 
school  painters  is  depressing.  Never  again 
can  I  find  them  more  than  mere  third-hand 
removes  of  nature.  The  Norwegians  come 
nearer  to  seeing  nature  as  I  see  it  than  any 


IMPRESSIONISM.  131 

other  nationality.  Their  climate  must  be 
somewhat  similar  to  that  in  which  my  life 
has  been  spent,  but  they  evidently  have 
more  orange  in  their  sunlight. 

The  point  to  be  made  here  is  this,  the 
atmosphere  and  coloring  of  Russia  is  not 
the  atmosphere  of  Holland.  The  atmos 
phere  of  Norway  is  much  clearer  and  the 
colors  more  vivid  than  in  England.  One 
school  therefore  cannot  copy  or  be  based 
upon  the  other  without  loss.  Each  painter 
should  paint  his  own  surroundings,  with 
nature  for  his  teacher,  rather  than  some 
Dutch  master,  painting  the  never-ending 
mists  and  rains  of  the  sea-level. 

This  brings  me  to  my  settled  conviction 
that  art,  to  be  vital,  must  be  local  in  its  sub 
ject  ;  its  universal  appeal  must  be  in  its  work 
ing  out,  —  in  the  way  it  is  done.  Dependence 
upon  the  English  or  French  groups  is  alike 
fatal  to  fresh,  individual  art. 

The  impressionist  is  not  only  a  local 
painter,  in  choice  of  subject  he  deals  with 
the  present.  The  impressionist  is  not  an 
historical  painter,  he  takes  little  interest  in 
the  monks  and  brigands  of  the  Middle  Ages. 


132  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

He  does  not  feel  that  America  is  without 
subjects  to  paint  because  she  has  no  castles 
and  donjon  keeps.  He  loves  nature,  not 
history.  His  attitude  toward  nature  is  a  per 
sonal  one.  He  represents  the  escape  from 
childish  love  of  war  and  the  glitter  of  steel. 

The  impressionist  paints  portraits  and 
groups,  but  paints  them  as  he  sees  them, 
not  as  others  see  them.  He  has  no  receipt 
for  "  flesh  color."  He  never  sees  human 
flesh  unrelated  in  its  color,  it  is  always  af 
fected  by  other  colors.  He  paints  the  yel 
low  hair  of  a  child  with  red,  blue,  and  yellow, 
the  gray  hair  of  the  grandmother  with  the 
same  primary  colors,  and  attains  such  truth 
and  vigor  that  the  portraits  made  with 
brown  shadows  seem  dull  and  flat.  Observe 
some  of  the  portraits  by  Bunker,  by  Zorn,  by 
Bertha  Wegmann  and  Mrs.  Perry,  or  the 
figures  in  firelight  by  Benson  or  Tarbell,  and 
you  find  them  all  subtle  studies  of  the  inter 
play  of  color,  with  no  hard  and  fast  line 
between  colors.  The  face  gives  to  the  dress, 
the  dress  to  the  face. 

True,  these  pictures  are  not  calculated  for 
study  with  a  magnifying  glass.  Meissonier 


IMPRESSIONISM.  133 

and  Detaille  always  seem  to  me  to  partake 
of  the  art  which  carves  a  coach-and-four  out 
of  walnuts ;  and  there  are  a  great  many  esti 
mable  folk  who  think  paintings  are  to  be 
smelled  of,  in  order  to  test  their  quality. 
Everything  is  not  worked  out  in  these  im 
pressionist  groups ;  there  is  the  suggestion  of 
a  true  impression  in  their  technical  handling. 

Their  work  is  not  hasty,  however.  It  is 
the  result  of  hard  study.  They  work  rapidly, 
but  not  carelessly.  They  are  like  skilled 
musicians ;  the  actual  working  out  of  the 
melody  is  rapid,  but  it  has  taken  vast  study 
and  practice.  Lines  are  few,  colors  simple, 
but  they  are  marvellously  exact.  It  must 
never  be  forgotten  that  they  are  not  delineat 
ing  a  scene;  they  are  painting  a  personal 
impression  of  a  scene,  which  is  vastly 
different. 

The  impressionist  does  not  paint  Cherubs 
and  Loves  and  floating  iron  chains.  He  has 
no  conventional  pictures,  full  of  impossible 
juxtapositions.  He  takes  fresh,  vital  themes, 
mainly  out-of-door  scenes.  He  aims  always 
at  freshness  and  vigor. 

The  impressionist  is  a  buoyant  and  cheer- 


134  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

ful  painter.  He  loves  the  open  air,  and  the 
mid-day  sun.  He  has  little  to  say  about  the 
"  mystery "  and  "  sentiment "  of  nature. 
His  landscapes  quiver  with  virile  color. 
He  emphasizes  (too  often  over-emphasizes) 
his  difference  in  method,  by  choosing  the 
most  gorgeous  subjects.  At  his  worst,  the 
impressionist  is  daring  in  his  choice  of  sub 
ject  and  over-assertive  in  his  handling.  Nat 
urally,  in  his  reaction  he  has  swung  back 
across  the  line  too  far. 

This  leads  Monet  to  paint  the  same  hay 
stack  in  twenty  different  lights,  in  order  to 
emphasize  the  value  of  color  and  atmos 
phere  over  mere  subject.  It  leads  Dodge 
McKnight  to  paint  water  "  till  it  looks  as  if 
skinned,"  as  one  critic  said.  It  led  Bunker 
to  paint  the  radiant  meadows  of  June,  and 
leads  Remington  to  paint  the  hot  hollows 
between  hills  of  yellow  sand,  over  which  a 
cobalt,  cloudless  sky  arches. 

The  impressionist,  if  he  is  frank,  admits  the 
value,  historically,  of  the  older  painters,  but 
also  says  candidly,  "  They  do  not  represent 
me."  I  walked  through  the  loan  exhibition 
with  a  man  who  cared  nothing  for  precedent, 


IMPRESSIONISM.  1 3  5 

—  a  keen,  candid  man ;  and  I  afterward 
visited  the  entire  gallery  with  a  painter,  —  a 
strong  and  earnest  man,  who  had  grown  out 
of  the  gray-black-and-brown  method. 

Both  these  men  shook  their  heads  at 
Inness,  Diaz,  Corot,  Troyon,  Rousseau,  and 
Millet.  The  painter  said,  a  little  sadly,  as 
if  surrendering  an  illusion,  "  They  do  not 
represent  nature  to  me  any  more.  They  're 
all  too  indefinite,  too  weak,  too  lifeless  in 
shadow.  They  reproduce  beautifully,  but 
their  color  is  too  muddy  and  cold." 

The  other  man  was  not  even  sad.  He 
said,  "I  don't  like  them, — that's  all  there 
is  about  it.  I  don't  see  nature  that  way. 
Some  of  them  are  decorative,  but  they  are 
not  nature.  I  prefer  Monet  or  Hassam  or 
the  Norwegians." 

As  for  me,  these  paintings  have  no  power 
or  influence  on  my  life,  other  than  to  make 
me  feel  once  more  the  inexorable  march  of 
art.  I  respect  these  men,  —  they  were  such 
deep  and  tender  souls !  They  worked  so 
hard  and  so  long  to  embody  their  conception 
of  nature,  but  they  do  not  represent  me,  do 
not  embody  the  sunlight  and  shadow  I  see. 


136  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

They  conceived  too  much,  they  saw  too 
little.  The  work  of  a  man  like  Enneking  or 
Steele  or  Remington,  striving  to  paint  native 
scenes,  and  succeeding,  is  of  more  interest 
to  me  than  Diaz. 

It  is  blind  fetichism,  timid  provincialism, 
or  commercial  greed  which  puts  the  works 
of  "  the  masters  "  above  the  living,  breathing 
artist.  Such  is  the  power  of  authority  that 
people  who  feel  no  answering  thrill  from 
some  smooth,  dim  old  paintings  are  afraid 
to  say  they  do  not  care  for  them  for  fear 
some  one  will  charge  them  with  stupidity  or 
ignorance. 

The  time  is  coming  when  the  tyranny  of 
such  criticism  will  be  overthrown.  There  is 
no  exclusive  patent  on  painting.  There  are 
just  as  faithful  artists  to-day  as  ever  lived, 
and  much  more  truthful  than  any  past  age 
could  have  been.  Day  by  day  the  old  sinks 
an  inch.  The  same  questions  face  the  painter 
that  face  the  novelist  or  the  sculptor.  Has 
the  last  word  been  said  ?  Did  the  masters 
utter  the  last  word  ?  Are  there  no  new  king 
doms  of  art  ?  It  is  the  age-worn  demand  of 
the  old  that  the  new  shall  conform. 


IMPRESSIONISM.  137 

The  old  masters  saw  nature  in  a  certain 
way,  —  right  or  wrong  it  does  not  matter; 
youth  must  conform.  They  saw  nature  in 
a  sombre  fashion,  therefore  youth  must  be 
decorous.  Youth,  in  impressionism,  to-day 
is  saying,  "  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  Con 
stable  or  Turner.  Their  success  or  failure 
is  nothing  to  me,  as  an  artist.  It  is  my  own 
impression  of  nature  I  am  to  paint,  not  theirs. 
I  am  to  be  held  accountable  to  nature,  not  to 
the  painters  of  a  half-century  ago. 

"  If  I  see  plum-colored  shadows  on  the 
snow,  or  violet  shadows  on  the  sand ;  if  the 
clouds  seen  above  perpendicular  cliffs  seem 
on  edge ;  if  a  town  on  a  hill  in  a  wild  wind 
seems  to  lean,  then  I  am  to  paint  it  so.  I 
am  painting  my  love  for  nature,  not  some 
other's  perception.  If  this  is  iconoclasm,  I 
cannot  help  it." 

Very  similarly,  the  tyranny  of  the  classic 
in  sculpture  is  giving  way,  and  America  is 
beginning  to  do  the  work  she  can  do  best. 
Very  probably,  sculpture  will  yet  embody 
in  stone  and  bronze  the  scenes  we  all  love  in 
American  life.  John  Rogers,  in  his  timid 
way,  pointed  the  way  after  all.  Lanceray, 


138  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

the  Russian  sculptor,  won  great  fame  by  em 
bodying,  in  a  way  never  before  realized,  the 
habits  and  dress  of  his  native  land.  Theat 
rical  at  times,  but  accurate  and  swift  and 
unified  always,  he  certainly  has  demonstrated 
that  a  mighty  future  exists  for  sculpture,  once 
the  tyranny  of  the  Greek  is  overthrown. 

There  are  few  limitations  to  sculpture. 
Whatever  the  artist  loves  and  wishes  to  put 
into  bronze  or  marble,  that  is  allowable.  All 
things  point  toward  genre  sculpture,  colored 
to  the  life,  not  conventionally  painted,  as  in 
Greek  art,  when  sculpture  was  but  just  de 
tached  from  architecture.  Wherever  the 
freed  soul  of  the  sculptor  loves  most,  there 
will  his  eager  hand  create  in  the  image  of 
his  passion. 

Our  wild  animals  have  already  found  a 
great  artist  in  Kemeys.  The  Indian  and 
the  negro  also  are  being  spiritedly  handled, 
but  the  workman  in  his  working  clothes,  the 
brakeman,  the  thresher  on  the  farm,  the  heater 
at  the  furnace,  the  cow-boy  on  his  horse,  the 
young  man  in  the  haying  field,  offer  equally 
powerful  and  characteristic  subjects.  There 
are  no  traditional  limitations  to  sculpture. 


JMPRESSIONISM.  139 

Whatever  the  sculptor  loves  and  desires  to 
fashion,  that  is  his  best  possible  subject. 

The  iconoclast  is  a  necessity.  He  it  is 
who  breaks  out  of  the  hopeless  circle  of  tra 
ditional  authority.  His  declaration  of  inde 
pendence  is  a  disturbance  to  those  who  sleep 
on  the  bosom  of  the  dead  prophets.  The 
impressionist  is  unquestionably  an  iconoclast, 
and  the  friends  of  the  dead  painters  are  prop 
erly  alarmed.  Here,  as  everywhere,  there  are 
the  two  parties,  —  the  one  standing  for  the 
old,  the  other  welcoming  the  new.  A  con 
test  like  that  between  realism  and  romanti 
cism  is  not  playful,  it  is  destructive. 

To  a  man  educated  in  the  school  of  Mu 
nich,  the  pictures,  both  of  the  Norwegians  and 
of  the  Giverney  group  of  Frenchmen  and  all 
other  pictures  with  blue  and  purple  shadows, 
are  a  shock.  They  are  not  merely  variants, 
they  are  flags  of  anarchy ;  they  leave  no 
middle  ground,  apparently.  If  they  are  right, 
then  all  the  rest  are  wrong.  By  contrast  the 
old  is  slain. 

Not  merely  this,  but  to  the  connoisseur  who 
believes  that  Corot,  Rousseau,  or  Millet 


140  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

touched  the  highest  point  of  painting,  these 
impressionists  are  intruders,  "they  come  in 
unbidden ;  they  are  ribald  when  they  are  not 
absurd."  It  is  the  same  old  fight  between, 
authority  and  youth,  between  the  individual 
and  the  mass.  "  We  do  not  welcome  change, 
we  conservatives.  It  discredits  our  masters 
and  confuses  us  with  regard  to  works  we 
have  considered  to  be  mountain-peaks  of 
endeavor." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are  justified  in 
taking  a  serious  view  of  the  situation.  The 
change  in  method  indicated  by  vivid  and 
fearless  coloring,  indicates  a  radical  change 
in  attitude  toward  the  physical  universe.  It 
stands  for  an  advance  in  the  perceptive  power 
of  the  human  eye.  Mercifully,  for  youth, 
the  world  of  humankind  and  physical  nature 
forever  offers  new  phases  for  discovery,  for 
a  new  work  of  art ;  just  as  new  subtleties  of 
force  lure  minds  like  Edison's  into  the  shadow, 
so  to  the  young  and  unfettered  artists  new 
worlds  of  art  beckon. 

Let  the  critic  who  thinks  this  a  vogue  or 
fad,  this  impressionist  view  of  nature,  beware. 
It  is  a  discovery,  born  of  clearer  vision  and 


IMPRESSIONISM.  141 

more  careful  study,  —  a  perception  which 
was  denied  the  early  painters,  precisely  as  the 
force  we  call  electricity  was  an  ungovernable 
power  a  generation  ago. 

The  dead  must  give  way  to  the  living.  It 
may  be  sad,  but  it  is  the  inexorable  law,  and 
the  veritist  and  the  impressionist  will  try  to 
submit  gracefully  to  the  method  of  the  icono 
clasts  who  shall  come  when  they  in  their 
turn  are  old  and  sad. 

For  the   impressionists  rank    themselves 
with  those  who  believe  the  final  word  will 
never  be  spoken  upon  art.     That  they  have 
added  a  new  word  to  painting,  no  competent 
critic  will  deny.     It  has  made  nature  more 
radiantly  beautiful,  this  new  word.     Like  the 
word  of  a  lover,  it  has  exalted  the  painter  to 
see  nature  irradiated  with  splendor  never  seen 
before.  Wherever  it  is  most  originally  worked 
out,  it  makes  use  of  a  fundamental  principle 
in  an  individual  way,  and  it  has  brought 
painting  abreast  of  the  unprejudiced 
perception  of  the  lover  of  na 
ture.     The  principle  is  as 
broad  as  air,  its  work 
ing  out  should  be 
individual. 


LITERARY    CENTRES. 


x  A      FAVORITE      pro- 

LITERARY   CENTRES.      P°Siti°n     With      *e 
business-man  of  the 

West  is  this  :  "  If  the  West  had  been  settled 
first,  the  East  would  be  a  wilderness  to-day, 
for  the  reason  (as  he  goes  on  to  explain)  that 
the  fertile  soil,  the  vast  cities,  the  ease  of 
communication  of  the  midland,  would  have 
made  it  the  home  of  all  ease,  refinement, 
culture,  and  art.  The  East  would  have  been 
only  a  fringe  of  seaport  towns,  with  fine 
shooting  and  fishing  lands  as  a  background." 
If  he  happens  to  be  a  business-man  with 
an  imagination  (there  are  such),  he  will  then 
say  :  "  The  East  has  therefore  had  its  day  as 
a  commercial  centre.  The  West  has  finally 
been  discovered.  The  East  has  poured  its 
millions  of  men  and  money  into  the  Missis 
sippi  valley,  and  these  millions  of  men  have 
taken  root  in  the  soil ;  and  to-day,  in  the  year 
of  1894,  the  commercial  dominance  of  the 
East  is  distinctly  on  the  wane.  Henceforth, 


146  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

the  centre  of  commercial  activity  in  the 
United  States  is  to  be  the  West.  Hence 
forth,  when  men  of  the  Old  World  speak  of 
America,  they  will  not  think  of  Boston  and 
New  York  and  Philadelphia,  they  will  mean 
Chicago  and  the  Mississippi  valley." 

There  is,  of  course,  an  element  of  exagger 
ation  in  this,  but  there  is  also  in  it  a  larger 
truth  and  a  magnificent  enthusiasm,  —  an 
enthusiasm  which  rises  above  commercial 
considerations.  The  man  who  really  dares 
to  face  the  future,  —  and,  of  course,  the  man 
who  dares  to  face  the  future  is  he  who  finds 
his  interests  served  by  it,  —  the  man  who  can 
sit  down  and  think  of  the  on-coming  millions 
of  the  great  Mississippi  valley,  must  admit 
that  over-statement  of  its  importance  is  quite 
impossible,  given  time  enough  for  fulfilment. 

Commercially,  the  West  rushes  toward  the 
future.  Cities  rise  with  velocity  hitherto 
inconceivable.  True,  they  are  mushrooms 
to  some  extent,  and  are  founded  upon  greed 
and  speculation  to  a  sorrowful  extent;  but 
the  people  are  coming  on  after  all,  people  of 
higher  wisdom  and  purer  life,  who  will  make 
these  mushroom  cities  temples  to  art  and 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  147 

song.  This  great  basin,  like  Egypt,  like  Ger 
many,  is  to  be  a  "  well  of  nations."  It  will  con 
tinually  revivify  and  reinvigorate  the  East, 
the  extreme  North,  and  the  extreme  South. 
It  will  be  the  base  of  food  supply  ;  the  heart 
of  the  nation ;  the  place  of  interchange. 

This  leads  me  to  a  proposition,  which  I 
make  on  my  own  account.  Literary  horizons 
also  are  changing  with  almost  equal  swift 
ness.  Centres  of  art  production  are  moving 
westward ;  that  is  to  say,  the  literary  supre 
macy  of  the  East  is  passing  away.  There  are 
other  and  subtler  causes  than  commercial 
elements  at  work.  Racial  influences  are  at 
work,  and  changes  in  literary  and  social 
ideals  are  hastening  a  far-reaching  subdivi 
sion,  if  not  decentralization,  of  power. 

In  the  West  there  is  coming  into  expression 
and  literary  influence  the  great  Scandinavian 
and  Germanic  element  to  which  the  tradi 
tions  of  English  literature  are  very  weak  and 
unimportant,  and  to  whom  Boston  and  New 
York  are  of  small  account.  They  have 
their  own  race-traditions  which  neutralize 
those  of  the  English  language  which  they 
speak,  and  thus  their  minds  are  left  free  to 


148  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

choose  the  most  modern  things.  It  is  im 
possible  for  them  to  take  on  the  literary 
traditions  of  their  adopted  tongue  with  equal 
power,  and  they  find  their  own  less  binding 
by  change. 

Again,  literary  traditions  are  weakening 
all  along  the  line.  The  old  is  passing  away, 
the  new  is  coming  on.  As  the  old  fades 
away,  the  strongholds  of  tradition  and  classic 
interest  are  forgotten  and  left  behind.  This 
mighty  change  is  a  silent  one,  but  it  is  irresis 
tible.  This  can  be  illustrated  in  the  change 
which  has  swept  over  Boston,  Concord,  and 
Cambridge  during  the  last  ten  or  twenty 
years. 

Boston  has  claimed  and  held  supremacy 
in  American  literature  for  more  than  half 
a  century.  Made  illustrious  by  Emerson, 
Hawthorne,  Whittier,  Longfellow,  Holmes, 
Lowell,  the  New  England  group,  it  easily 
kept  its  place  as  the  most  important  literary 
centre  in  America.  New  York  was  second, 
and  Philadelphia  third.  This  Cambridge 
group  has  been  called  "the  polite  group" 
and  "  the  Library  group."  Its  members  took 
things  for  the  most  part  at  second  hand. 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  149 

They  read  many  books,  and  mainly  wrote 
gentle  and  polite  poems  on  books  and  events. 
Whittier  and  Hawthorne,  notwithstanding 
their  larger  originality,  were,  after  all,  related. 
They  took  things  in  a  bookish  way.  It 
would  be  absurd  to  say  they  were  weak  or 
poor,  they  were  very  high  and  noble;  but 
they  belonged  to  another  period.  They  were 
more  closely  allied  with  the  past,  with  Eng 
lish  traditions,  than  we,  and  were  actuated 
by  different  ideals  of  life. 

So  long  as  this  group  lived,  Boston  was 
the  literary  autocrat  of  the  nation.  But  the 
school  of  book-poets  is  losing  power.  And, 
with  the  change  in  literary  creed,  Boston  has 
lost  its  high  place,  and  it  is  but  natural  that 
she  should  now  take  a  rather  mournful  view 
of  American  literature. 

New  York  to-day  claims  to  be,  and  is,  the 
literary  centre  of  America.  Boston  artists 
one  by  one  go  to  New  York.  Literary  men 
find  their  market  growing  there,  and  dying 
out  in  Boston.  They  find  quicker  and 
warmer  appreciation  in  New  York,  and  the 
critical  atmosphere  more  hospitable.  The 
present  receives  a  larger  share  of  attention 


150  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

than  in  Boston.  Henceforward  New  York, 
and  not  Boston,  is  to  be  the  great  dictator 
of  American  literature.  New  York  already 
assumes  to  be  able  to  make  or  break  a  novel 
ist  or  playwright.  Certainly  it  is  the  centre 
of  magazine  production  ;  and  the  magazine  is, 
on  the  whole,  the  greatest  outlet  for  distinc 
tive  American  art. 

We  are  more  American  in  our  illustrating 
and  in  our  fiction  than  in  any  other  lines  of 
artistic  work.  New  York  is  the  centre  of 
oil-painting  as  well  as  of  illustration,  and  its 
markets  exceed  those  of  almost  all  other 
American  cities  taken  together.  In  short, 
its  supremacy  in  art  must  be  conceded  to  be 
as  complete  to-day  as  its  commercial  domi 
nation  in  railways  and  stocks. 

And  yet  New  York  is  in  danger  of  assum 
ing  too  much.  She  must  not  forget  that 
the  writers  and  painters  who  make  her  illus 
trious  are  very  largely  products  of  the  South 
and  West.  One  needs  but  to  run  over  the 
list  of  the  leading  magazine-writers  of  the 
last  ten  years,  to  see  how  true  this  is.  Ohio 
sends  William  D.  Howells;  Virginia  sends 
Thomas  Nelson  Page  and  Amelie  Rives ; 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  151 

Indiana  sends  Edward  Eggleston,  James 
Whitcomb  Riley,  Mrs.  Catherwood.  Ten 
nessee  is  represented  by  the  Murfree  sisters. 
Georgia,  by  Joel  Harris  and  Richard  Malcolm 
Johnston.  Louisiana  finds  voice  through 
George  W.  Cable  and  Ruth  McEnnery 
Stuart.  Arkansas  and  Kentucky  are  repre 
sented  by  Alice  French  and  James  Lane 
Allen ;  and  so  through  a  notable  list.  These 
are  but  a  few  of  the  best  known  of  the 
names.  Thus,  every  part  of  the  West  or 
South  is  represented  in  the  literary  domina 
tion  of  New  York. 

It  is  not  so  much  a  victory  of  New  York 
over  Boston,  it  is  the  rising  to  literary  power 
of  the  whole  nation.     New  York  is  but  the  "\    V"" 
trumpet  through  which  the  whole  nation  is     \ 
at  last  speaking.     Let  New  York  remember  /^ 
this  and  be  humble,  for  the  same  causes  that 
have  cut  away  the  pride  of  Boston  will  cer 
tainly  bring  about  a  corresponding  change 
in  the  relation  of  New  York  to  the  South 
and  West. 

It  was  easy  for  Boston  to  maintain  her 
literary  supremacy  while  the  whole  popula 
tion  of  the  nation  was  less  than  forty  mil- 


152  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

lions,  when  the  whole  West  was  a  frontier, 
and  the  South  was  a  slave-country.  It  will 
be  hard  for  New  York  to  retain  her  present 
supremacy  with  a  nation  of  seventy  millions 
of  people,  with  cities  containing  half  a 
million  people  springing  up  in  the  interior 
and  on  the  Western  sea,  —  not  to  mention 
Chicago,  whose  shadow  already  menaces 
New  York. 

Already  Chicago  claims  to  have  pushed 
New  York  from  her  seat  as  ruler  of  our 
commerce.  The  whole  West  and  South  are 
in  open  rebellion  against  her  financial  rule. 
Chicago  equals,  possibly  outnumbers  her,  in 
population,  and  certainly  outspeeds  her  in 
enterprise.  The  rise  of  Chicago  as  a  literary 
and  art  centre  is  a  question  only  of  time, 
and  of  a  very  short  time  ;  for  the  Columbian 
Exposition  has  taught  her  her  own  capabili 
ties  in  something  higher  than  business.  The 
founding  of  vast  libraries  and  universities 
and  art  museums  is  the  first  formal  step,  the 
preparation-stage ;  expression  will  follow 
swiftly.  Magazines  and  publishing-houses 
are  to  come. 

The  writers  have   already  risen.      Every 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  153 

literary  man  must  have  a  beginning  some 
where,  and  there  are  scores  of  original  young 
writers  and  artists  just  rising  to  power  in 
the  West.  They  need  only  a  channel  for 
utterance  ;  it  will  come,  and  they  will 
speak. 

It  is  not  contended  that  the  names  quoted 
above  are  the  best,  —  that  they  represent  the 
perfect  art  of  the  new  school.  Most  of  them 
are  young  writers,  all  of  them  are  significant 
of  things  to  come,  but  many  of  them  are 
already  of  national,  even  international,  fame. 
The  absolutist  in  his  sneer  at  the  rising  young 
artists  forgets  that  the  literary  masters  he 
worships  were  once  as  helpless  to  reply  to 
the  question  :  What  have  you  done  ? 

It  is  not  intended  to  say  that  New  York 
has  not  her  native  share  in  this  new  move 
ment ;  I  aim  merely  to  show  that  never 
again  can  a  city  or  a  group  of  States  over 
shadow  the  whole  of  literary  America.  It 
is  not  merely  a  question  of  New  York  and 
Chicago  now,  it  is  the  rise  of  literary  centres 
all  over  the  nation.  Henceforth,  St.  Louis, 
New  Orleans,  Atlanta,  Denver,  San  Fran 
cisco,  Cincinnati,  St.  Paul,  and  Minneapolis, 


154  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

and  a  dozen  more  interior  cities  are  to  be 
reckoned  with. 

Like  Avignon  and  Marseilles,  they  will 
have  literary  men  and  literary  judgments  of 
their  own.  The  process  is  one  of  decentral 
ization,  together  with  one  of  unification. 

Never  again  will  any  city  dominate  Amer 
ican  literature ;  and,  in  my  judgment,  there 
will  be  no  over-topping  personalities  in  art. 
The  average  is  rising ;  the  peaks  will  seem 
to  sink. 

There  are  other  reasons  for  the  revolt 
against  the  domination  of  the  East  over  the 
whole  nation.  New  York,  like  Boston,  is  too 
near  London.  It  is  no  longer  American. 
It  is  losing  touch  with  the  people.  Chicago 
is  much  more  American,  notwithstanding  its 
foreign  population.  Its  dominant  population 
is  splendidly  American,  drawn  from  the  im 
mediate  States,  —  Indiana,  Illinois,  Iowa, 
Wisconsin,  Kentucky,  and  Ohio.  It  does  not 
profess  to  be  exclusive ;  it  professes  to  be  a 
meeting-place.  Of  course,  it  has  its  tremu 
lous  and  timid  imitators  of  New  York  and 
Boston  imitations  of  London  and  Paris ; 
but  these  people  are  in  a  sad  minority. 


•£*-v 

/*/  «    A       tfL^V'- 


I///V 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  155 

The  great  body  of  men  and  women  who 
give  strength  and  originality  to  Chicago  are 
people  who  care  very  little  what  New  York 
thinks  of  their  work,  and  the  doings  of 
London  and  Paris  are  not  more  vital. 

No  critic  whose  eyes  are  not  fastened  upon 
the  past  can  imagine  a  hopeless  literary 
future  for  this  great  nation.  To  the  con 
servative,  who  thinks  change  necessarily 
destructive  and  hopeless,  the  future  is  a 
blank.  To  the  radical,  who  feels  change  to 
be  necessary  and  natural,  the  present  and 
the  future  are  filled  with  magnificent  prom 
ise.  The  horizon  widens  each  year,  includ 
ing  more  cities,  more  writers,  more  lovers  of 
light  and  song,  more  makers  of  literature. 
Literary  invention  is  as  inevitable  as  the 
manipulation  of  the  material  universe.  The 
material  always  subtends  the  intellectual. 
Activity  in  material  comes  ultimately  to  be 
expressed,  and  expression  is  commensurate 
with  the  deed. 

"  Bigness  does  not  count,"  the  East  says 
in  answer  to  the  West.  Yes,  but  it  does ! 
The  prairies  lead  to  general  conceptions. 
The  winds  give  strength  and  penetration 


156  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

and  alertness.  The  mighty  stretches  of 
woods  lead  to  breadth  and  generosity  of 
intellectual  conception.  The  West  and 
South  are  coming  to  be  something  more 
than  big,  coming  to  the  expression  of  a  new 
world,  coming  to  take  their  places  in  the 
world  of  literature,  as  in  the  world  of  action, 
and  no  sneer  from  gloomy  prophets  of  the 
dying  past  can  check  or  chill  them. 

The  literature  which  is  already  springing 
up  in  those  great  interior  spaces  of  the  South 
and  West  is  to  be  a  literature,  not  of  books, 
but  of  life.  It  will  draw  its  inspiration  from 
original  contact  with  men  and  with  nature. 
It  will  have  at  first  the  rough-hewn  quality 
of  first-hand  work.  It  is  to  out-run  the  old- 
world  limitations. 

Its  vitalizing  element  will  be  its  difference 
of  treatment,  which  will  not  be  that  of  any 
other  literature  of  any  other  place  or  time, 
and  it  is  extremely  improbable  that  it  will 
ever  submit  to  any  central  academy,  whether 
in  New  York  or  Chicago. 

This  school  will  be  one  where  most  nota 
bly  the  individuality  of  each  writer  will  be 
respected,  and  this  forbids  strict  conformity 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  157 

to  accepted  models.  When  life  is  the  model 
and  truth  the  criterion  and  individualism  the 
coloring  element  of  a  literature,  the  central 
academy  has  small  power.  There  will  be 
association  as  of  equals,  not  slavish  accep 
tance  of  dictation. 

Then  again,  hero-worship  in  literature  is 
weakening.  In  the  days  when  there  were 
few  literary  men,  and  these  few  men  pro 
fessedly  held  strange  powers  entirely  distinct 
from  their  fellows,  something  of  awe  went 
with  the  reader's  admiration.  To-day,  when 
the  ranks  of  the  poets  are  thick  with  adepts, 
and  when  the  novelists  write  of  comprehen 
sible  subjects  and  lay  no  claim  to  mystic 
power,  both  poet  and  novelist  are  approached 
without  ceremony.  This  also  weakens  the 
hold  of  the  central  academy. 

The  blight  upon  the  literature  of  the 
West,  like  that  of  all  provinces,  has  been 
its  timidity,  its  tendency  to  work  in  accepted 
modes,  its  childish  desire  to  write  for  the 
applause  of  its  masters  in  the  East.  This 
has  been,  in  fact,  the  weakness  of  the  entire 
output  of  American  literature.  The  West 
only  emphasizes  the  fact.  In  material  things, 


158  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

America  has  boundless  self-assertion,  but  in 
the  arts  it  has  imitated  because  of  its  failure 
to  perceive  its  proper  relation  to  the  litera 
ture  of  the  world.  The  West,  reckoning 
itself  an  annex  of  the  East,  has  imitated 
imitations. 

Because  the  East  considered  itself  Eng 
lish  in  general  character,  the  West,  so  far  as 
most  of  its  writers  are  concerned,  has  ac 
quiesced.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  West  is 
not  English.  The  Northwest  is  more  largely 
Teutonic  and  Scandinavian,  and  the  peo 
ple  of  Indiana,  Ohio,  and  Illinois  are  far 
removed  from  England  and  from  English 
conceptions  of  life ;  and  this  distance  is  sure 
to  find  its  statement  in  literature.  Wiscon 
sin,  Iowa,  Minnesota,  Dakota,  and  other 
Western  States  are  half  composed  of  men 
and  women  of  Germanic  or  Scandinavian 
extraction.  The  literature  rising  from  these 
people  will  not  be  English.  It  will  be  some 
thing  new ;  it  will  be,  and  ought  to  be,  Amer 
ican,  —  that  is  to  say,  a  new  composite. 

The  centre  of  this  literature  of  national 
scope,  therefore,  cannot  be  in  the  East.  It 
will  not  be  dominated  by  the  English  idea. 


LITERARY  CENTRES  159 

It  will  have  no  reference  to  Tennyson  or 
Longfellow  or  Arnold.  Its  reference  to  the 
north  of  Europe,  to  Norway  or  Germany,  will 
have  less  of  benumbing  effect,  for  these 
northern  peoples  are  not  so  deeply  enslaved 
to  the  past  as  England  is. 

The  West  should  work  in  accordance  with 
the  fundamental  principles  of  good  writing ; 
that  is,  it  should  seek  to  attain  the  most  per 
fect  lucidity,  expressiveness,  flexibility,  and 
grace.  Its  technique  should  be  comprehen 
sible,  clear  in  outline,  and  infinitely  sugges 
tive,  ready  to  be  submitted  to  the  world,  but 
free  to  use  new  forms. 

The  choice  of  subject  and  the  quality  which 
enters  into  it,  like  a  subtle  flavor  into  wine, 
should  be  individual,  not  subject  to  any  school 
or  master. 

The  judgment  of  the  East  should  take  rank 
merely  among  other  judgments ;  it  should 
not  be  held  all-important. 

The  purpose  of  this  writing  is  not  merely 
to  combat  literary  centralization,  but  also  to 
build  up  local  centres.  Wherever  a  human 
soul  is  moved  by  genuine  love  of  nature  and 
of  men  to  the  conscientious  and  faithful  study 


160  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

of  the  expression  of  his  emotions,  there  is  a 
literary  centre.  Around  him  are  grouped 
minds  whose  candid  criticism  can  aid  and 
direct  him ;  but  this  criticism  must  not  evade, 
nor  demand  conformity  to  tradition ;  it  must 
demand  of  the  young  writer  truth,  sincerity, 
and  individuality. 

Let  the  critics  of  the  local  centres  remem 
ber  Mistral  and  Whitcomb  Riley,  who  won 
their  way  among  the  people  before  the  criti 
cal  journals  would  take  count  of  them.  It 
is  the  man  who  has  no  knowledge  of  accepted 
forms,  and  who  therefore  refers  every  work  of 
art  back  to  nature,  who  is  quickest  to  respond 
to  the  literature  of  life.  The  average  Ameri 
can  is  quick  to  thrill  to  real  emotion,  only  he 
wants  it  direct  and  unaffected. 

I  believe  in  the  local  magazine.  With  the 
growth  of  inland  cities  in  wealth  and  refine 
ment,  the  magazine  will  come  to  displace  the 
mere  newspaper,  possibly  the  newspaper  will 
grow  into  the  magazine.  The  work  of  the 
local  magazines  like  "  The  Southern,"  "  The 
Californian,"  "  The  Midland,"  "  The  Over 
land,"  can  be  made  of  vast  importance  in  the 
nation's  life. 


LITERARY  CENTRES.  161 

Let  them  keep  close  to  the  local  life,  devel 
oping  the  best  —  that  is,  the  simplest  and 
most  natural  —  talent  of  their  region,  making 
their  appeal  constantly  to  the  unspoiled  yet 
discerning  taste  of  the  middle-conditioned 
people,  and  they  will  succeed.  "  They  have 
always  failed  in  the  past,"  says  the  doubter ; 
possibly,  but  the  past  is  not  the  present 
or  the  future.  Taste  is  rising.  Culture  is 
broadening  swiftly.  A  new  generation  is 
coming  on,  —  a  generation  of  veritists.  Con 
ditions  grow  more  hospitable  to  this  local 
literature  with  great  rapidity.  What  was  true 
of  local  conditions  five  years  ago  will  scarcely 
be  true  to-day. 

O  Sayers  and  Doers  of  this  broad,  free 
inland  America  of  ours  !  to  you  is  given  the 
privilege  of  being  broad  and  free  in  your  life 
and  letters.  You  should  not  be  bound  to  a 
false  and  dying  culture,  you  should  not 
endeavor  to  re-enact  the  harsh  and  fierce 
and  false  social  dramas  of  the  Old  World. 
You  should  not  turn  your  face  to  the  east,  to 
the  past  Your  comment  should  be  that  of 
free  men  and  women,  loving  equality,  justice, 
truth. 

ii 


162  CRUMBLING  IDOLS 

Yours  not  to  worship  crumbling  idols ;  your 
privilege  and  pleasure  should  be  to  face  life 
and  the  material  earth  in  a  new  way,  —  mould 
ing  old  forms  of  government  into  new 
shapes,  catching  from  earth  and 
sea  and   air,  new  songs  to 
sing,  new  thoughts  to 
frame,  new  deeds 
to    dare. 


XI. 

LITERARY    MASTERS. 


IT  is  all  a  question 

LITERARY  MASTERS.     °f    maSterS'      Ther6 
are  masters  who  set 

free,  there  are  masters  who  enslave.  The 
best  critic  is  he  who  frees,  and  the  best 
criticism  of  the  Old  World  has  demanded  of 
America,  not  imitations  of  the  old  forms,  but 
free,  faithful,  characteristic  work.  It  is  the 
second-class  critic  who  enslaves  to  the  past, 
unable  to  comprehend  advance. 

For  fifty  years  the  best  critics  of  England 
and  of  Europe  have  been  calling  for  the 
native  utterance  of  American  writers.  Pos- 
nett,  Dowden,  Taine,  Ve'ron,  Freiligrath, 
Bjornson,  every  critic  who  has  perceived 
the  forward  movement  of  all  art,  has  looked 
for  a  new  conception,  a  new  flavor,  a  new 
manner  in  American  literature  ;  and  almost 
as  constantly  have  the  conservative  and 
narrow  critics  of  Boston  and  New  York 
discouraged  the  truest,  freest  utterance  of 


1 66  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

the  American  poet  and  novelist.  Not  all 
have  been  of  this  hopeless  type,  but  it 
remains  true  as  a  general  comment.  Upon 
the  tender  springing  plant  of  American  liter 
ature  the  frost  of  conservative  culture  has 
ever  fallen.  No  wonder  the  young  writer 
has  turned  to  copying  old  forms,  and  so 
benumbed  and  sterilized  his  creative  soul. 

It  really  comes  down  to  a  contest,  not 
between  the  East  and  the  West,  but  between 
sterile  culture  and  creative  work;  between 
mere  scholarship  and  wisdom;  between  con 
servative  criticism  and  native  original  liter 
ary  production. 

It  is  a  question  of  books  versus  a  litera 
ture  of  life,  a  struggle  between  adaption  to 
new  surroundings  and  conformity  to  the 
ancestral  type.  It  is  only  because  there 
happen  to  be  more  conservatives  in  the  East 
that  the  contest  takes  on  the  appearance 
of  a  war  between  East  and  West. 

The  East  has  its  magnificent  radicals,  men 
who  stand  for  free  art  and  modern  art.  I 
do  not  forget  the  encouragement  which  the 
young  writer  owes  to  them;  and  yet  these 
Eastern  radicals  will  be  the  first  to  acknowl- 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  167 

edge  the  truth  I  write  concerning  the  dangers 
of  a  centralization  of  power. 

Shall  our  literature  be  a  literature  of  the 
East,  in  mode  if  not  in  subject,  or  shall  it  be 
national  ?  Is  it  to  be  only  so  large  as  the 
conception  of  New  York  and  Boston  critics, 
or  shall  it  be  as  big  and  broad  and  democra 
tic  as  the  best  thought  of  the  whole  nation  ? 
Is  every  work  of  art  of  every  Western  or 
Southern  man  or  woman  to  be  submitted 
with  timid  air  to  a  jury  that  represents  only 
a  section  of  American  society,  —  a  section 
which  is  really  nearer  the  Old  World  than 
the  New,  — or  shall  the  writing  be  addressed 
to  the  whole  nation  ?  Is  it  safe  to  depend 
upon  a  half-dozen  publishing  houses,  or  a 
half-dozen  magazines,  for  outlet?  Would  it 
not  be  better  to  have  many  magazines,  pro 
vided,  of  course,  the  standard  of  excellence 
were  high  ?  Editors  and  critics  are  human. 
They  are  likely,  at  best,  to  be  biassed  by 
their  personal  likes  and  dislikes.  It  is  not 
well  that  too  much  power  be  vested  in  any 
one  city. 

The  supposition  is  that  America  finds 
amplest  outlet  in  its  present  magazines,  which 


1 68  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

are  mainly  in  the  East ;  but  this  is  not  true. 
It  is  a  physical  impossibility  first;  and, 
second,  the  theory  is  that  the  magazines  are 
conducted  for  Eastern  readers  and  in  har 
mony  with  the  traditions  inherited  by  the 
East. 

This  is  not  complaint.  No  young  writer 
of  to-day  has  less  cause  for  complaint  than  I. 
It  is  a  statement  of  fact.  There  have  arisen 
in  the  East  these  great  magazines,  hospita 
ble  in  their  way,  but  limited  and  inadequate 
to  the  expression  of  the  art-life  of  this  great 
nation.  Their  influence  has  been  beneficent, 
—  is  yet ;  but  there  is  a  greater,  truer,  and 
freer  expression  of  this  people  which  will 
come  only  with  the  rise  of  native  inland 
magazines. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  this  controversy  is 
not  sectional.  It  is  in  the  East  as  well  as  in 
the  West.  All  over  America,  in  towns  and 
cities,  there  are  groups  of  readers  whom  our 
reigning  monthlies  do  not  represent.  These 
readers  have  not  only  all  the  substantial 
acquirements  of  the  conservatives,  but  pos 
sess  a  broader  Americanism  and  a  more  inti 
mate  knowledge  of  American  life  than  the 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  169 

aristocrat  who  prides  himself  on  never  having 
been  farther  west  than  Buffalo. 

The  culture  represented  by  these  radicals 
is  not  alone  based  upon  knowledge  of  dead 
forms  of  art;  it  includes  living  issues  of 
art.  The  number  of  these  readers  increases 
year  by  year.  They  stand  for  ideas  and  con 
ditions  of  the  future,  and  from  them  artists 
are  rising,  filled  with  courage  and  moved  by 
convictions  of  their  allegiance  to  truth.  These 
people  demand  something  more  than  smooth 
conventional  work.  They  realize  the  tendency 
of  young  authors  not  to  write  as  they  really 
feel,  but  as  they  think  the  editors  of  the 
great  magazines  would  have  them  write. 
They  realize  the  danger  which  lies  in  putting 
into  the  hands  of  a  few  men,  no  matter  how 
fine  they  may  be,  the  directing  power  of 
American  literature. 

These  cultivated  and  fearless  radicals  join 
Western  readers  in  saying,  "  By  what  right 
do  you  of  the  conservative  East  assume  to 
be  final  judges  of  American  literature  ? 
What  special  qualifications  does  a  residence 
on  the  extreme  eastern  shore  of  our  nation 
give  you,  by  which  to  settle  all  questions  of 
a  national  literature  ? " 


170  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

"  The  West  is  crude,"  Eastern  critics  are 

Vfond  of  saying. 
"What  do  you  mean  by  that?  Do  you 
mean  that  there  are  not  men  and  women  of 
the  highest  type  in  the  West  ?  Do  you  mean 
that  we  do  not  conform  to  your  specific  ideal 
of  culture  ?  Or  do  you  mean  that  we  have 
not  been  self-respecting  enough  in  our  own 
thinking?  In  what  lies  your  assumed  supe 
riority  over  the  West  ?  " 

To  this  the  East  replies :  "  We  are  the 
occupying  claimants  of  the  glory  of  the  great 
men  of  this  century's  literature.  We  have 
also  the  great  libraries,  the  museums,  the 
great  universities,  which  make  us  the  centre 
of  critical  intelligence.  Granting  your  great 
railways,  your  stupendous  enterprises,  your 
great  cities,  the  East  still  remains,  and  must 
remain,  the  centre  of  the  highest  literary 
culture  in  America." 

The  West  rejoins  :  "  That  is  precisely  the 
point  at  issue.  We  deny  that  the  East  is  to 
be  the  exclusive  home  of  the  broadest  cul 
ture.  We  feel  that  much  of  this  culture  is 
barren  and  insincere.  It  has  a  hopeless 
outlook.  It  leads  nowhere.  It  treads  a 
circle,  like  the  logic  of  the  Koran. 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  171 

"  Culture  is  not  creative  power.  Scholar 
ship  does  not  imply  wisdom.  We  do  not 
believe  a  city  at  our  farthest  East  can 
remain  the  city  most  progressive  in  its  art, 
most  unbiassed  in  its  judgments.  The 
American  city  of  broadest  culture  is  hence 
forth  to  be  that  where  the  broad,  free  cur 
rents  of  American  life  daily  ebb  and  flow. 
Such  a  city  can  know  and  will  know  all 
that  the  East  knows  of  fundamental  prin 
ciples  of  art  and  literature,  and  will  have 
a  wider  knowledge  of  the  scope  and  action 
of  American  life." 

The  conservative  of  the  East  then  says  : 
"It  will  take  a  hundred  vears  to  make  a  West 
ern  city  into  the  likeness  of  New  York  or 
Boston.  The  mellow  charm  of  our  literary 
atmosphere  is  the  growth  of  two  centuries. 
Our  very  streets  are  lined  with  suggestive 
walls  and  historical  tablets.  Our  drawing- 
rooms  and  our  clubs  represent  the  flowering 
culture  of  ten  generations." 

The  West  quickly  responds :  "  Keep  your 
past.  Hug  your  tablets  to  your  bosom  : 
you  are  welcome  to  all  that;  we  are  con 
cerned  with  the  present,  and  with  the  splen- 


172  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

dor  of  the  future.  Your  culture  is  too  largely 
of  the  moribund.  Cleverness  will  not  save 
you.  You  fail  to  conceive  that  our  idea  of 
culture  is  a  different  and,  we  assert,  a  higher 
form,  because  it  refers  to  a  culture  of  living 
forms.  Besides,  culture,  even  of  the  broad 
est,  is  only  part  of  it ;  creative  power  is  the 
crowning  splendor  of  a  nation's  life.  Scholar 
ship  does  not  necessarily  imply  wisdom. 
The  study  of  the  past  does  little  for  original 
genius.  Libraries  and  universities  produce 
few  of  the  great  leaders  of  American  thought ; 
all  that  books  can  give  is  our  inheritance  as 
well  as  yours." 

The  radical  continues:  "We  deny  that 
the  Eastern  '  art  atmosphere  '  is  necessary 
to  the  production  of  original  works  of  art. 
We  doubt  the  ability  of  New  York  or 
Boston  criticism  to  pass  final  judgment 
upon  a  Western  work  of  art,  because  the 
conditions  of  our  life  are  outside  the  circle  of 
its  intimate  knowledge.  A  criticism  which 
stands  for  old  things,  we  repeat,  is  not  the 
criticism  which  is  to  aid  the  production  of 
characteristic  American  art.  America  is  not 
to  submit  itself  to  the  past;  it  is  to  be  free." 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  173 

"  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  propose  to 
cut  loose  from  the  past  ?  "  asks  the  tradition 
alist. 

"  By  no  means.  We  expect  to  assert  our 
right  to  our  day,  as  Russia,  Norway,  Ger 
many,  and  others  of  our  neighbor  nations 
have  done.  The  youth  of  all  nations  are  in  the 
fight.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  one  of  those 
returning  cycles  of  progress  in  art  when  the 
young  man  attains  his  majority.  America 
has  begun  to  attain  her  majority,  to  claim  the 
right  to  a  free  choice  in  art  as  well  as  in 
government,  to  speak  her  own  mind  in  her 
own  way." 

"  Permit  us  —  are  you  to  use  as  a  medium, 
Choctaw  or  English  ? "  the  East  inquires,  in 
strenuously  polite  phrase. 

"That  illustrates  the  inadequateness  and 
the  illiberality  of  your  attitude  toward  us. 
We  propose  to  use  the  speech  of  living  men 
and  women.  We  are  to  use  actual  speech 
as  we  hear  it  and  to  record  its  changes.  We 
are  to  treat  of  the  town  and  city  as  well  as  of 
the  farm,  each  in  its  place  and  through  the 
medium  of  characteristic  speech.  We  pro 
pose  to  discard  your  nipping  accent,  your 


174  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

nice  phrases,  your  balanced  sentences,  and 
your  neat  proprieties  inherited  from  the  eigh 
teenth  century.  Our  speech  is  to  be  as 
individual  as  our  view  of  life." 

The  conservative  replies :  "  Your  view  of 
life  is  of  no  interest  to  us.  We  do  not  see 
the  necessity  of  Americans  troubling  to  write 
or  paint  at  all  in  future.  We  have  books 
and  paintings  enough  in  the  market.  When 
we  want  a  book,  we  buy  a  classic,  and  know 
what  we  are  getting.  When  we  want  a  paint 
ing,  there  are  Corots  and  Rousseaus  and 
Bouguereaus  in  the  markets.  Produce  wheat 
.and  corn  and  railway-stocks  yet  awhile,  and 
don't  trouble  yourself  about  literary  prob 
lems.  Read  the  classics  for  the  improve 
ment  of  your  style.  In  the  mean  time,  we 
will  see  that  American  literature  is  not 
vulgarized." 

The  Western  radical  warmly  replies :  "  Who 
constituted  you  the  guardian  of  American 
literature  ?  What  do  you  know  of  the  needs 
or  tastes  of  the  people  —  " 

Testily  the  aristocrat  breaks  in :  "  My  dear 
sir,  I  care  nothing  for  any  tastes  but  my 
own.  I  don't  like  the  common  American  in 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  175 

life,  and  I  don't  like  him  in  books.  There 
fore— " 

"  There !  "  rejoins  the  radical,  triumphantly. 
"  There  is  a  second  point  admitted.  You 
have  no  sympathy  with  the  American  peo 
ple  of  middle  condition.  You  are  essentially 
aristocratic  and  un-American  in  your  posi 
tion.  From  your  library,  or  from  the  car- 
window,  you  look  upon  our  life ;  that  is  the 
extent  of  your  knowledge  of  our  conditions, 
at  best.  For  the  most  part  you  have  never 
been  west  of  Niagara  Falls.  How  can  you 
be  just  to  this  literature  which  springs  from 
a  life  you  do  not  know  or  sympathize 
with? 

"  We  are  forming  a  literature  from  direct 
contact  with  life,  and  such  a  literature  can 
be  estimated  only  by  unbiassed  minds  and 
by  comparison  with  nature  and  the  life  we 
live.  Are  you  fitted  to  be  the  court  of  last 
resort  upon  our  writing  by  reason  of  your 
study  of  English  novels  and  your  study  of 
last-century  painting?  The  test  of  a  work 
of  art  is  not,  Does  it  conform  to  the  best 
models?  but,  Does  it  touch  and  lift  and 
exalt  men  ?  And  we  profess  ability  to  per- 


176  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

ceive  these  qualities  even  west  of  the  Missis 
sippi  River. 

"We  care  little  for  the  free-masonry  of 
literary  phrases  which  relates  one  spectacled 
enthusiast  over  dead  men's  books  to  a  simi 
lar  devotee  of  dead  men's  pictures.  The 
West  should  aim  to  be  wise  rather  than 
cultured.  Wisdom  is  democratic,  culture  is 
an  aristocrat.  Wisdom  is  knowledge  of 
principle,  culture  is  a  knowledge  of  forms 
and  accepted  conditions;  the  contention  is 
world  old,  but  necessary." 

In  the  above  colloquy,  which  may  be 
typical  in  a  measurable  degree,  I  have  put 
the  Western  radical  over  against  the  Eastern 
conservative,  not  because  there  are  not  con 
servatives  in  the  West  and  radicals  in  the 
East,  but  because  it  is  my  sincere  convic 
tion,  taking  the  largest  view,  that  the  in 
terior  is  to  be  henceforth  the  real  America. 
From  these  interior  spaces  of  the  South 
and  West  the  most  vivid  and  fearless  and 
original  utterance  of  the  coming  American 
democracy  will  come. 

This  is  my  conviction.     I  might   adduce 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  177 

arguments  based  on  the  difference  in  races ; 
I  might  speculate  upon  the  influence  of  the 
Irish  and  Jews  and  Italians  upon  New 
York  and  Boston,  and  point  out  the  quicker 
assimilation  of  the  Teutonic  races  in  the 
West,  but  it  would  only  be  passed  over  by 
the  reader. 

I  confess  to  a  certain  failure  to  adequately 
portray  what  I  mean.  The  things  I  would 
put  in  evidence  are  intangible.  There  are 
the  mighty  spaces  of  the  West,  the  swarming 
millions  of  young  men  and  women  coming 
on  in  this  empire  of  the  Mississippi  valley. 
Some  imaginative  Easterners  caught  glimpses 
of  it  at  the  Exposition,  where  the  Eastern  cul 
ture  and  accent  was  swallowed  up  and  lost 
in  the  mighty  flood  of  the  middle  West,  un 
known  and  inarticulate,  but  tremendous  in 
its  mass. 

It  is  impossible  to  convey  to  others  the 
immense  faith  in  this  land  which  intimate 
knowledge,  gained  by  fifty  thousand  miles 
of  travel,  has  built  up  in  me.  I  know  my 
West ;  I  know  its  young  minds.  I  can  see 
their  eager  faces  before  me  as  I  write.  I 
know  the  throb  of  creative  force  everywhere 
12 


1 78  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

thrilling  the  young  men  and  women  of  these 
States,  and  yet  I  realize  my  inability  to  put 
it  in  evidence.  I  might  mention  names, 
writers  of  whose  power  I  am  assured,  — 
they  would  be  unknown  ;  circumstances  may 
crush  them. 

America  is  the  most  imaginative  and 
creative  of  nations.  Its  inventions,  its  huge 
constructions,  prove  that.  Only  in  its  litera 
ture  and  art  has  it  been  bound  by  tradition. 
Its  inventive  and  its  original  constructive 
genius  arose  from  needs  which  dominated 
tradition.  Its  great  railways,  bridges,  tun 
nels,  transportation  facilities,  were  perfected 
by  minds  which  rose  out  of  the  common 
ranks  of  American  life.  The  genuine  Amer 
ican  literature,  in  the  same  way,  must  come 
from  the  soil  and  the  open  air,  and  be  like 
wise  freed  from  tradition.  Such  an  epoch  is 
upon  us. 

Lowell  felt  this,  in  spite  of  his  English 
environment.  In  his  old  age  something  of 
his  early  faith  in  America  came  back  to  him. 

"  No  :  morning  and  the  dewy  prime  are  born 
into  the  earth  again  with  every  child.  It  is  our 


LITERARY  MASTERS.  179 

fault  if  drouth  and  dust  usurp  the  noon.   .    .  . 

Our  time  is  not  an  unpoetic  one.     This  lesson  I 

learn  from  the  past :  that  grace  and  goodness,  the 

fair,  the  noble,  and  the  true  will  never  cease 

out  of  the  world  till  the  God  from  whom 

they  emanate  ceases  out  of  it.  ... 

Lives  of  the  great  poets  teach 

us  they  were  the  men  of 

their  generation  who 

felt  most  deeply  the 

meaning  of  the 

present." 


XII. 


A    RECAPITULATORY    AFTER- 
WORD. 


X]J  THERE  come  times 

A  RECAPITULATORY    *    the  development 

AFTER-WORD.  °f     ^     "'     When 

the     creative     mind 

re-asserts  itself,  and  shakes  itself  loose  from 
the  terrible  power  of  the  past.  This  dis 
sent,  this  demand  for  artistic  freedom,  is 
always  made  by  youth,  and  always  meets 
with  the  bitter  and  scornful  opposition  of  the 
old.  To  conform  is  easy,  —  it  is  like  sleep. 
To  dissent  is  action  in  the  interests  of  the 
minority. 

At  certain  times  a  great  writer  like  Dante 
or  Shakespeare  or  Hugo  or  Ibsen  rises,  — a 
grand  innovator  and  dissenter,  —  and  holds 
intellectual  dominion  over  the  world  during 
his  life,  apparently  by  his  personal  force 
and  expression ;  and  after  his  death,  critics 
who  draw  their  rules  of  art  from  him  come 
to  worship  and  bow  down  before  him  as 
a  demigod  of  literature.  He  becomes  a 
fetich. 


1 84  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

Once  an  author  reaches  this  stage,  he  be 
comes  an  incubus.  His  personal  defects  are 
exalted  into  universal  excellencies,  methods 
to  be  copied.  He  becomes  fee  standard  of 
measurement  for  the  critic  without  discern 
ment  or  judgment  of  his  own.  It  is  so 
easy  to  say  of  the  new  artist,  "  He  paints 
purple  shadows  on  the  snow ;  Corot  did  not, 
therefore  the  young  artist  is  wrong."  Of  such 
is  the  criticism  based  upon  past  models. 

Meanwhile,  Shakespeare  and  Corot  are  in 
nocent  of  this.  Were  Corot  living  to-day,  he 
would  be  in  the  advance  line  of  present  art. 
Shakespeare  would  be  grappling  with  present 
themes,  like  the  tremendous  iconoclast  he 
was.  Burns  would  be  a  social  radical  and 
a  writer  of  modern  dialect.  These  men  re 
belled  against  authority  in  their  day.  They 
did  not  dream  of  becoming  obstructing  au 
thorities  after  their  death. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  literary  power  is  not 
personal;  it  is  at  bottom  sociologic.  The 
power  of  the  writer  is  derived  from  the  so 
ciety  in  which  he  lives ;  like  the  power  of  a 
general,  which  springs  from  the  obedience  of 
his  army.  When  society  changes,  when  his 


A  RECAPITULATORY  AFTER-WORD.    185 

audience  dies,  the  writer's  power  passes  away. 
This  is  the  natural  law,  and  would  take  way 
easily  and  quickly  were  there  not  other  ten 
dencies  to  conserve  and  retard,  just  as  in  the 
animal  organisms. 

Schools  are  conservative  forces.  They  are 
nearly  always  linked  with  the  aristocratic 
and  the  old,  especially  in  their  art  instruc 
tions.  Universities  are  bulwarks  of  tradi 
tion.  They  are  pools  left  on  the  beach 
by  an  ebbing  tide.  They  conserve  the 
past.  They  study  the  living  present  but 
little.  They  are  founded  upon  books. 
They  teach  conformity,  they  do  not  develop 
personality. 

The  natural  thing  for  our  society  to-day 
is  to  demand  of  its  artists  fresh  and  vivid 
interpretations  of  nature  and  society.  The 
feudalistic  forms  of  life  are  drawing  off. 
The  certainly  democratic  is  coming  on.  It 
is  natural  for  Americans  to  say  :  Sophocles, 
Shakespeare,  Moliere,  Schiller  do  not  satisfy 
us.  They  represent  other  outlooks  upon 
life.  They  do  not  touch  us  directly.  We 
prefer  a  more  human  and  sympathetic  art,  — 
something  nearer  and  sweeter. 


1 86  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

This,  I  repeat,  is  the  natural  feeling  of  the 
ordinary  man  or  woman  of  to-day,  and  yet 
such  has  been  the  power  of  the  conservative 
forces  in  art  that  the  dissenter  acquiesced 
in  outer  expression  while  privately  throwing 
his  Shakespeare  aside  for  Dickens,  George 
Eliot,  Hugo,  and  Turgenief.  He  has  ap 
plauded  the  orator  who  said  "  Shakespeare 
ended  the  drama ; "  but  he  has  left  Shake 
speare  to  gather  dust  on  his  library  walls 
while  he  reads  the  newspaper  and  meets  his 
friends  in  conversation  about  the  latest  comic 
opera.  In  other  words,  literary  hypocrites 
are  made  plentiful  by  the  pressure  of  conser 
vative  criticism  precisely  as  in  the  religious 
world. 

The  quality  most  needed  in  literary  dis 
cussion  to-day  is  not  learning,  it  is  candor. 
Literary  discussion  is  full  of  lies.  Men  pro 
fess  to  admire  things  which  do  not  touch 
them.  They  uphold  forms  of  art  which  they 
know  to  be  dead.  They  fear  to  be  called 
destructionists.  They  feel  in  some  way  bound 
to  lie  for  the  sake  of  youth.  Youth  must  be 
dulled  into  a  literary  hypocrite,  and  so  all 
mouths  are  set  awry. 


A  RECAPITULATORY  AFTER-WORD.    187 

But  an  era  of  reorganization  is  upon  us. 
The  common  man  is  again  moving  in  intel 
lectual  unrest,  as  in  the  time  of  Burns  and 
Shelley.  The  young  men  are  to  speak  their 
minds.  The  re-assertion  of  artistic  indepen 
dence  is  to  be  made.  The  literary  fetich  is 
to  fail  of  power,  and  original  genius  once 
more  push  the  standards  of  art  forward. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  old  idols  are  crumbling 
in  literature  and  painting  as  in  religion. 
"  Changeless  throughout  the  centuries,  they 
sit  upon  their  inapproachable  thrones,"  cries 
the  rhetorician;  but  it  is  only  a  fine  figure  of 
speech.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are  being 
worn  away.  An  impalpable  sand,  blown  upon 
them  by  ceaseless  winds  from  free  spaces, 
has  worn  them  down  ;  their  blurred  features 
wear  a  look  of  vague  appeal.  They  are  no 
longer  as  gods ! 

Below  them  the  changing  currents  of  hu 
man  life,  grown  quicker,  pass  by  without 
looking  up  there  where  they  sit.  Great  seams 
are  opening  in  the  base  of  their  thrones ;  they 
will  soon  fall,  these  few  remaining  ones,  as 
all  the  others  have  fallen,  and  the  rivers  of 
life  will  pass  by  on  the  other  side. 


1 88  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

That  this  should  happen  seems  dreadful 
and  impossible  to  the  conservative  mind  ;  to 
the  dissenter,  it  is  in  conformity  with  the 
great  law  of  evolution.  The  dynamic  con 
ception  of  art  does  not  mourn  over  decay ;  it 
faces  the  on-coming  day,  content  to  be  and 
to  do,  now. 

"  ^Eschylus,  there  he  lies,  deep  in  the  past, 
a  colossal  fragment,  his  brow  projecting 
above  the  sands  of  centuries,"  cries  Hugo. 
Yes,  there  he  lies,  and  there  Shakespeare 
lies,  sunk  and  sinking,  just  as  every  other 
human  soul  sinks  into  the  sand.  In  the 
illimitable  sweep  of  the  centuries  there  is 
little  to  choose  between  a  reign  of  two  cen 
turies  and  one  of  fifty  years. 

In  the  carcass  of  every  dead  lion,  maggots 
breed  and  fatten,  unmindful  of  the  green  grass 
and  the  fresh  wind  blowing  by,  hearing  not 
the  living  lion's  royal  tread.  So  the  scholiast 
bores  and  bores  in  the  dead  body  of  the  past ; 
his  sluggish  sense  dead  to  the  smell  of  grow 
ing  corn  and  the  moving  by  of  living  things. 

Not  from  such  sources  does  a  living  litera 
ture  flow.  Each  age  of  strong  creative  cap 
ability  reveals  life  in  its  own  fashion ;  that 


A  RECAPITULATORY  AFTER-WORD.    189 

is,  each  creative  age  in  the  past  uttered  its 
own  truth  as  over  against  the  convention 
alized  dogmas  of  its  teachers.  I  believe  such 
a  period  of  literary  breaking-away  has  come 
in  America.  Whitman  announced  it,  but 
could  not  exemplify  it  in  popular  form.  He 
voiced  its  force,  its  love  of  liberty  and  love  of 
comrades,  but  he  was  the  prophet,  not  the 
exemplar.  He  said  well,  that  the  real  lit 
erature  of  America  could  not  be  a  polite 
literature.  The  nation  is  too  great,  too 
sincere. 

There  is  coming  in  this  land  the  mightiest 
assertion  in  art  of  the  rights  of  man  and  the 
glory  of  the  physical  universe  ever  made  in 
the  world.  It  will  be  done,  not  by  one  man, 
but  by  many  men  and  women.  It  will  be 
born,  not  of  drawing-room  culture,  nor  of 
imitation,  nor  of  fear  of  masters,  nor  will  it 
come  from  homes  of  great  wealth.  It  will 
come  from  the  average  American  home,  in 
the  city  as  well  as  in  the  country.  It  will 
deal  with  all  kinds  and  conditions.  It  will 
be  born  of  the  mingling  seas  of  men  in  the 
vast  interior  of  America,  because  there  the 


190  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

problem  of  the  perpetuity  of  our  democracy, 
the  question  of  the  liberty  as  well  as  the 
nationality  of  our  art,  will  be  fought  out. 
This  literature  will  be  too  great  to  submit  to 
the  domination  of  any  literary  centre  or  liter 
ary  jmaster.  With  cities  of  a  half  a  mil 
lion  inhabitants,  scattered  from  Pittsburg  to 
Seattle,  New  York  and  Chicago  will  alike 
be  made  humble. 

Rise,  O  young  man  and  woman  of  Amer 
ica  !  Stand  erect !  Face  the  future  with  a 
song  on  your  lips  and  the  light  of  a  broader 
day  in  your  eyes.  Turn  your  back  on  the 
past,  not  in  scorn,  but  in  justice  to  the  future. 
Cease  trying  to  be  correct,  and  become  crea 
tive.  This  is  our  day.  The  past  is  not 
vital.  It  is  a  highway  of  dust,  and  Homer, 
yEschylus,  Sophocles,  Dante,  Shakespeare 
are  milestones.  Libraries  do  not  create 
great  poets  and  artists;  they  seldom  aid, 
and  they  often  warp  and  destroy  them.  To 
know  Shakespeare  is  good.  To  know  your 
fellow-men  is  better.  All  that  Shakespeare 
knew  of  human  life,  you  may  know,  but 
not  at  second  hand,  not  through  Shake- 


A  RECAPITULATORY  AFTER-WORD     191 

speare,  not  through  the  eyes  of  the  dead,  but 
at  first  hand. 


In  evolution  there  are  always  two  vast 
fundamental  forces:  one,  the  inner,  which 
propels ;  the  other,  the  outer,  which  adapts 
and  checks.  One  forever  thrusts  toward 
new  forms,  the  other  forever  moulds,  con 
serves,  adapts,  reproduces.  Progress  is  the 
resultant  of  these  forces. 

The  force  that  flowers  is  the  individual, 
that  which  checks  and  moulds  is  environ 
ment.  Impulse  is  the  stronger  to-day,  to 
morrow  conformity  chills  and  benumbs.  Of 
such  cycles  is  the  history  of  art.  Rebellious 
youth  breaks  from  the  grim  hand  of  the 
past  and  toils  in  his  own  way  till  he  grows 
old,  and  then  becomes  oppressor  in  his 
turn;  and  death  again  liberates  youth,  whose 
keen  nostril  breathes  again  the  air  of  heaven 
as  if  the  centuries  had  been  clock-ticks. 

Of  what  avail  then,  O  you  of  the  dead 
past ! 

What  fear  ye,  O  youth,  to  whom  life  smells 
so  sweet !  Accept  the  battle  challenge  cheer- 


192  CRUMBLING  IDOLS. 

fully,  as  those  before  you  have  done.     What 
you  win,  you  must  fight  for  as  of  old.     And 
remember,  life  and  death  both  fight  with  you. 
Idols  crumble  and  fall,  but  the  skies  lift 
their  unmoved   arch   of  blue,   and 
the  earth  sends  forth  its  rhyth 
mic  pulse  of  green,  and  in 
the  blood  of  youth  there 
comes  the  fever  of 
rebellious  art. 


.  • .  Printed  by  John 
Wilson  &  Son  .  • .  at 
the  University  Press 
.  in  Cambridge  for  . 
STONE  &  KIMBALL 
in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
.  MDCCCXC1V .  . 


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